Married
by BendAndCurl
Summary: A dark fairytale set four years after the manga ends. SoMa (Rating for language & future adult content). LATEST CHAPTER: Maka is trapped in Crona's soul, Soul is searching for answers, and Nygus receives a disturbing letter
1. Prologue: Promise

General Warnings for this fic: language, violence, medical procedures and description of symptoms, some gore, angst, and sexual themes. Specific warnings will be posted at the top of each chapter. Thanks for reading!

* * *

A member of the flight crew began to instruct them on emergency procedures in the event of a water landing, a hijacking, a stowaway, or a sudden barfing attack. Soul turned away from their overzealous crew leader and rolled his eyes to his partner.

He was already planning how he could tease Maka, who was surely studying the flight safety manual in case it came up on some test later or, he didn't know, something else that would never happen. To his disappointment, she wasn't looking at the flight safety manual. She wasn't even looking at the safety demonstration.

She was staring straight ahead, ignoring him.

The night before, they'd fought over some silly thing, like whose turn it was to pick the movie or what they should order for takeout. Tensions had been running high, and they'd decided to call it an early night since they just couldn't seem to agree on anything.

He understood why; this sometimes happened before major missions, and this was the biggest mission they'd had since their last battle on the moon with Asura. After four years of painstaking strategy briefings with Stein and Sid, intense diplomatic negotiations between Kid and the witches, and a lot of emotional preparation on Maka's part, they were finally ready to rescue Crona from the moon.

But then the two had begun their day in silence, and she'd hardly spoken more than a few words to him before they boarded the zeppelin that would take them to the moon. He wanted to say something, but he was pretty sure she'd give him some clipped response and go back to ignoring him anyway. So instead he put his headphones in and tried to forget how much this tension was bothering him.

The attendant came by to serve their in-flight meal, which Soul considered but ultimately decided against. He couldn't fight on a full stomach. Maka apparently felt the same way, because she refused as well. His ipod battery was approaching 20% and he was considering putting it away and trying to get in a quick nap when she suddenly slipped her hand into his, their fingers tangling awkwardly and then aligning as they both pretended nothing was happening.

Soul tried to ignore how much lighter he felt, the way his heart seized and his wavelength smoothed out to compliment hers. She must have felt it, though, because she gave a little smile and then ducked her head before he could say anything.

They sat in silence for the rest of their journey, but to Soul it felt completely different. She was letting him in.

Maka was stressed because she felt responsible for Crona. She took on so much, tried to be strong, but she still felt shame about the help and support she received from others. Some days, he wondered if she resented him, if she hated that she couldn't do this all on her own. He knew it was wholly irrational and borne of her fierce independence and desire to be like her mama. But still, he couldn't help but feel frustrated when she wouldn't open up to him, wouldn't lean on him. He wanted her to know that it was okay to need a partner in battle. That it was a good thing to be stronger together. He'd discovered that a long time ago, she hadn't quite.

"Hey, sorry about earlier, I was just–"

"It's cool," he told her. "Let's go kick Asura's ass again, huh?"

Sharp shark teeth gleamed at her and she matched his grin. Somewhere near the other end of the zeppelin, Black*Star screeched "Yahoo!" and they turned to the window in time to see the blackened surface of the Moon fast approaching.

* * *

"And now we begin."

Still facing them, the witch knelt on floor of Shibusen's dungeon, carefully avoiding the edges of the pentagram her sisters had devised. Her cloak was lined with owl feathers, which brushed the cold stone softly as she settled into place. At the risk of smudging the fresh blood of the pentagram, everyone present simultaneously hissed in anxiety.

The witch gave no indication if she noticed their distress. Her feathers remained unscathed.

And the circle remained unbroken.

"Sisters, lend me your powers now."

But there was hesitation: a shuffling here, a cough there.

The woman did not stand. She raised her golden, round eyes, scanning the crowd of witches gathered for the ceremony. "You dare resist? Is it not on order of Most High Grand Witch Mabaa that you join me here in this endeavor? Speak if you wish, or lend me your powers and let it be done."

Shrinking before their sister's gaze, the assembled witches shifted uncomfortably. The witch in the pentagram waited as they rearranged themselves so that only one of them remained standing defiantly before the pentagram, foisted into prominence by her more timid compatriots.

"Paloma? I had not expected to see you, of all people, betraying the order of our leader. Doves mean peace, do they not?" The woman on the floor addressed the new leader of the latest mutiny with a small, regretful smile on her face.

Paloma flinched as if she had been struck. There was more shifting, some titters broke out among the group. Paloma looked behind her for support, and finding little, she squared her shoulders and prepared to state her case.

"Madam, why do we help these people? For hundreds of years they have hunted us, struck us down, used the souls of our own kind against us in battle. It is because of them we lived in fear, sealed away from the rest of the world, unable to show ourselves on pain of death!"

Her piece spoken, Paloma stepped backward and crossed her arms defensively in front of her chest. Rather than strengthen her image, it gave her the appearance of a petulant teenager.

The witch on the floor sat blinking slowly, her owlish nature manifested in her utter stillness, her lack of expression. It seemed the entire room was holding its breath.

Finally the woman spoke.

"Are you not tired of the fighting? Are we all not tired?"

The witch's eyes flashed and she stared beyond the crowd, as though she could see something past the cloaked figures cowering against the dungeon walls.

"Mabaa grows old. Once rare, her visions are now overtaking her. Or had you forgotten the power of our Grandmother's eye? She sees all. And she sees her time is approaching. Soon, she will travel on to that place we are not yet privileged enough to follow."

A shiver ran through the room.

"Would you have her leave a world at peace, a world which seeks to bridge and repair the harm and the violence which our ancestors experienced? Or would you have her leave a world in which we hide in our realms and, yes, continue to be hunted and abhorred and violated in the ways that Shibusen has always done?"

"But we ought to fight them! Since the treaty, they won't be expecting it, and–"

"Silence!" whispered the witch in the pentagram, and Paloma's mouth suddenly sealed itself shut. She began to scream, but the only sound which could be heard was the resonance in her nasal cavity as she pulled and pulled at her jaw.

"Be still, child, or shall I render you immobile as well?"

Paloma's expression was one of stark terror as she slowly began to shake her head, still clutching her face. The group parted, nobody wanting to touch her. She backed up until her back hit the wall. Her eyes welled up with tears.

No one dared speak.

"Under the old Death, we had no choice but to live as we did, hidden away in our realms. Now we have the opportunity to live with Death as our ally. Does this not make us stronger? Who can say what Grandmother Mabaa sees in her visions? But a world with the mighty Shibusen in our debt is a reality we shall all wake to on the morrow."

The owl-witch's eyes glinted with golden light. She gazed at her sisters, one by one, until their heads were bowed in submission.

"Sisters, what say you?"

"Yes, Heir Huuhkaja," came the resounding conclusion.

Paloma bowed her head in defeat.

"Paloma, you may go." The Heir said graciously. Paloma looked stricken, and gestured to her face, clearly hoping to be freed from the curse.

"You may go," repeated the witch in the pentagram quietly. Her eyes still glinted with light.

"Now, sisters, lend me your power."

Paloma's footsteps echoed in the dungeon hallway long after her exit.

* * *

"Alright, everyone. This will not be like last time. The witches are already working binding spells and enchantments to keep Asura from reawakening, so you should be able to extract Crona without releasing the madness. All you have to do is resist the madness long enough to rescue Crona."

Kid's image radiated confidence and power from the mirror. Since the zeppelin landed, Stein, Maka, Black*Star, and Kim had joined their weapon partners in crowding around the dinghy piece of glass placed in the observation quarters to strategize one last time before the rescue.

"Remember the plan: Maka will use her wavelength to break the barrier, and Black*Star, who is less susceptible to madness, will cover for Stein and Spirit, who will be retrieving Crona. Asura is weak due to the witches spells, but be on guard in any case."

The group exchanged nods of agreement. Everyone who volunteered for this mission knew the risks. There were many who did not support it, many who felt that risking the lives of Shibusen's finest for a member of the Gorgon family could only end badly.

Still, the mission had its supporters. Stein and Marie had been instrumental in getting support for the mission; Stein had extolled the research opportunities that a living sample of black blood could provide, and Marie had volunteered to oversee Crona's rehabilitation. Maka had always planned to return for Crona, and Soul hadn't had to think about it– he would support Maka always. Spirit was likewise willing to do just about anything to get back in the good graces of his only daughter. Kim and Jackie had worked tirelessly with the witches since the treaty had been formed, and this mission was as much a test of their diplomatic prowess as it was Kid's. Black*Star's motives for helping were more unclear; but the Meister had never been one to stay out of the spotlight for long.

Kid continued with the plan.

"Kim will remain in the zeppelin with the medical team. If you need backup, Jackie and Kim will come to your aid, but that means leaving the medic team unprotected, so only make that call if absolutely necessary. Any questions?"

"We get it, dude. Go back to your fancy office and let us do our work!" Black*Star said with a grin, pausing to crack his knuckles loudly. Kim turned to glare at him and Tsubaki shrugged apologetically.

"I agree with Black*Star," Maka said, surprising everyone. "We're ready. We've been planning this for four years. If we hesitate now, we lose the element of surprise."

Kid smiled. "Very well. Go on then, and good luck."

* * *

Soul cradled Maka's prone form as she lay there, barely responsive and bleeding onto the surface of the Moon. It had started out well– Maka's anti-magic wavelength had been instrumental in overcoming the black blood barrier surrounding the moon. The energy she had expelled in destroying the obstructive fluid had left them both vulnerable to a swiftly-awakening Asura, but the two of them had never had a problem holding their own against Asura before.

The problem had come when Maka was struck by Black*Star's Soul Force attack as she used her wavelength to open the way for everyone else. From his basic field knowledge, Soul guessed she had multiple broken ribs and a serious concussion. He'd have to give Black*Star shit for that later, couldn't that egotistical ninja have been a little more considerate of where his fellow fighters were?

He took a deep breath. She'll be fine, he tried to reassure himself. After all, they had been in many battles before this, and they'd been worse prepared for many of them. With medical treatment, Maka's injuries wouldn't be anything a few days in bed couldn't cure. Still, he fussed over her as he put pressure on her wounds.

It seemed the team had succeeded in retrieving Crona. From where he and Maka were positioned, he could see Shibusen staff loading a frail, thin body onto a stretcher and heading towards the zeppelin that would take everyone back to Death City. He hoped they would bring a stretcher for Maka, as he was in no shape to carry her and her condition was worsening by the moment. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kid directing a medical crew over to them.

She kept trying to talk and he didn't want her to waste her energy, so he leaned closer and tried to listen to what she was saying.

"S-Soul..."

"Yeah Maka, right here with ya."

"Soul."

"Yeah Maka, what is it?"

"Is Crona..."

"Yeah, we got 'em. They're being taken care of in the zeppelin now, okay? And the staff are coming to get you and then we'll all go home, so I need you to save your energy for just a bit longer, okay?"

She slumped back in relief, her grip on his shirt loosening.

It seemed her grasp on reality was loosening, too. "Soul, Soul, Soul... Soul cooooooool." She started giggling but it quickly turned into wet coughing, blood leaking out of her mouth.

"Maka? Try not to talk, okay?" Soul said anxiously.

"S-sooooul. I havta say something though, sssss importnnn."

"Okay, okay. I'm listening, what is it?"

"Don't leave me."

"I won't," he promised, squeezing her hand gently.

She looked at him, the intensity in her gaze almost frightening. "Don't leave me," she repeated.

"I won't Maka, I promise. I'm not going anywhere."

"Don't ever... go... away."

"Maka, you need to save your strength."

"I need... you... to stay. Please."

He bent his head forward, arms tightening around her.

"Always. As long as you want me, I'll be here, okay?"

She nodded, and her eyes drifted closed as she lost consciousness.


	2. For granted

Warnings for: language

* * *

Soul continued holding his Meister's hand, even as the zeppelin sped towards Earth, even as the medical team administered to her. When he had to let go so that they could patch her wounds, he settled for hovering nearby and anxiously staring at her.

For once, Maka lacked the spark and danger she usually emitted during battle. She looked so small and weak, lying on the gurney with the medical team wrapping her in gauze and Kim kneeling by her side, administering enough magic to keep her stable until they landed and could get her real care at the Dispensary.

He watched her eyelids flutter as the zeppelin hit a patch of turbulence and her head was knocked to the side. Her now-empty hand clenched and unclenched, and he grimaced. He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he didn't notice Jackie standing beside him until she put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Hey. You did well out there". She told him softly.

He shrugged. "Doesn't really feel like it."

She said nothing, but he knew she understood. As weapons, they shared concern for their Meister's safety above all else. He could never have spoken so candidly about this with a Meister, not even Maka, but he had a feeling that he and Jackie were on the same page.

"She'd kill me if I ever mentioned it, but I always feel like the hits she takes are hitting me, y'know? It kinda feels like it's a failure on my part, to keep her safe".

Jackie nodded. "I know. Every time Kim gets hurt during a fight, she tells me not to blame myself, but it's hard when you finish a battle without a scratch while your Meister is barely conscious".

"The worst part is that Maka just doesn't get it. She sees it as her own weakness, and always says it means she needs to become stronger. She just doesn't see why I would feel responsible, and it feels like... Like ..."

"Like she doesn't take you for granted? Like she doesn't expect you to be there to protect her from anything that comes her way?" Jackie said, cutting to the heart of the matter in a way that he wasn't sure he ever would have been able to, even if he'd found the words.

"I guess, yeah".

Something flashed across Jackie's face then, as she watched Kim administering to Maka, and Soul wondered whether Jackie had even been addressing her words to him when she had spoken just now.

They were the kinds of words that implied deeper feelings, the kind of words a lover might say. Soul didn't find it hard to believe that Jackie might feel that way about her Meister. The way she had looked at Kim when she had said it spoke volumes.

But then why did he feel like her statement fit his relationship to Maka so well?

Kidd's voice rang out then, warning them that they were about to land, and he and Jackie scrambled to find a seat before the zeppelin made its mad descent.

* * *

He felt better that evening, when Maka had been set up in the dispensary and Nygus had assured him that she'd be making a full recovery within a week at the most.

They sat in her office while Maka dozed in the infirmary. Nygus had cut him off as he had attempted to sneak in to see his Meister, and now the nurse was sitting at her desk, writing out care instructions for the evening staff and trying to convince him to go home for the night.

"The IV drip is going to be delivering sedatives and painkillers, so even if she is conscious she won't be in much of a state for visiting". The bandaged woman warned him, her expression stern.

"Come off it, Nygus. You know I won't disturb her. You're kidding yourself if you think I'm going to leave my Meister by herself after what we just went through".

She sighed. "I guess it won't hurt, but don't go letting anyone else know I let you in there. I've had enough trouble from Black*Star over the years to know how fast he'd be in here if he thought I'd let him."

The scythe must have looked surprised that she gave in so quickly, because Nygus burst out laughing.

"Soul, I've seen you two resonating in battle. Your resonance rate is famous around Shibusen. I'm sure having your soul wavelength nearby will calm her."

He smirked, satisfied with his victory.

"And I imagine you two have a lot to discuss, if you haven't already, now that Crona's been retrieved. I'll give you two some time alone".

"What?" Soul felt like he'd missed something.

She gave him a steady look. "You're a Death Scythe. Maka's objective as a Meister has been fulfilled. Most Meisters who reach that point go on to train other weapons."

Soul shook his head. "Not us. We talked about this four years ago after we killed Arachne. I won't partner with anyone else, and I'm sure Maka feels the same way."

Nygus sighed quietly. She stood up and indicated that he could leave. Soul was in such a rush to join Maka's side that he missed the look of pity on the nurse's face.

As soon as Maka was awake, she asked how Crona was doing. Soul immediately felt guilty; he hadn't even thought to ask Nygus about the swordsman, and he wished he had something to report to her.

So he changed the subject, asking her how she was feeling, how her wounds were healing.

She tried to give a reassuring smile, at least that's what he guessed it was supposed to be. It looked more like a grimace, but he knew she'd had worse injuries before.

"At least I can move my arms and you don't have to feed me this time. Remember the curse Arachne put on me?"

Soul rolled his eyes. "How could I forget having to spoon feed you like a baby for two weeks while Black Star tried to autograph your forehead every five minutes?"

"You weren't much help in preventing him, as I remember" She grumbled. But her eyes were twinkling. Her hand snaked out from under the covers to grasp his, and he felt himself flush.

They sat in silence for a few moments, savoring the feeling of being alive, being together, being safe and quiet and still.

"We did it, Soul". She whispered finally.

"Hm?" He had been staring into space, letting the feeling of her hand in his sweep him away into a confused state of mind, one which was somehow both blissfully blank and yet racing with implications. He broke himself out of his thoughts and looked over at her.

"We rescued Crona". She elaborated. "It's such a relief, it's been weighing on me for years now and finally they're back, and safe, and it just feels so strange... I almost don't know how to deal with it".

"You'll have to ask Crona how they deal with it" Soul teased.

Maka nodded, seemingly deep in thought.

Soul thought it might be a good time to bring up their future, to ask what the next step would be, but before he could broach the subject, Maka made it clear she had other things she wanted to discuss first.

"I wonder... How do you think Crona is, Soul?"

"Well, I saw them being loaded onto a stretcher after you passed out on the Moon, so they're probably injured pretty bad. I don't know if Crona's conscious yet, but I'll ask Nygus and let you know when we can go visit".

"Thanks, but that's not exactly what I meant. Crona's been on the moon for four years. I'm worried about them... All that loneliness... For so long..."

Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked rapidly, trying to clear them.

One of Maka's hands crept up to scrub at her face and Soul squeezed the other hand, trying to give her support.

As usual, he calmed her down, made her see sense, set her back on track. "Worrying about it won't help Crona right now, Maka. You're their best friend, seeing you will help no matter how they are feeling. So just focus on getting well so you can be there for them, okay?"

"You're right, Soul. I guess I hadn't really thought about what was going to happen after the rescue".

She sunk back into the stack of pillows on her hospital bed, looking small and wary. It always took him aback, her abrupt transition from badass, kishin-hunting Meister to exhausted nineteen-year old girl. It was something he hadn't put a lot of thought into before, but he wondered now if Meisters didn't transform in their own way during battle. Soul filed that theory away, vaguely noting that Maka was probably rubbing off on him if he was starting to actually theorize about Weaponmeistery outside of class.

He realized she was waiting for his response. He thought about it. What _was_ going to happen after the rescue? "It's funny, actually. We spent so much time planning the rescue but nobody thought about what would happen after. I think people didn't really expect for it to work".

"I knew it would." Maka said quietly. "I promised Crona we would rescue them. I would never forget that promise."

Soul felt like an ass. "Yeah, of course."

He glanced around the room. "Is there anything you need? Like can I get you anything before I go back home?"

Her face lit up then and she gave him a list of books she was itching to read, including some that required a trip to the library. Now that Soul was a Death Scythe, he had access to the restricted section, and Maka had been taking full advantage of these expanded library privileges even if Soul couldn't have cared less.

He grumbled about her demands and told her not to make him regret his offer to bring her books. She pouted, he smirked. Soul had missed this, quiet time with his Meister without the looming guilt about Crona overtaking her, without the impending threat of death and battle and Kishins and black blood.

Some part of Soul must have been extremely perverse, because thinking of how happy he felt immediately spoiled everything. He looked at her face, at how the florescent lights illuminated her green eyes, how her cheeks flushed with excitement and her hair was mussed up from laying in a hospital bed all day and he felt a sense of foreboding overwhelm him.

Something told him things couldn't stay this way forever, and that he would be the eternal loser in the impending game of fate. He sensed that when it happened, it would crash down on them with all the destructive force of Justin's guillotine. And somehow, Soul knew that until then, all he could do was hold on and wait for the blade to drop over his neck.

* * *

The guillotine dropped the next morning.

Kid called him at 8am sharp, which was way too fucking early thankyouverymuch. Drooling and sprawled happily accross his bed, Soul hadn't awoken to respond to the mirror call. Unfortunately, Kid, staying true to his promise to be a Shingami for a new generation, then opted to call Soul on his cell phone.

Soul groaned and rolled out of bed to sit on the floor. With the buzzing of his phone ringing in his ears, he hurriedly rummaged around the laundry carelessly tossed on his floor until he found the pants he'd been wearing the day before and fished his phone out of the pocket.

"What!" He barked into the phone.

"Good morning, Soul. I do hope I haven't called too early"

Soul bit back a retort. It was hard to get used to Kid's new role as Shinigami. Kid wasn't just his friend anymore, he was his _boss._

"Whatever, just tell me what you need me to do".

Okay, so, _yeah_, Kid might be his boss, but unlike his Meister, Soul had never been a morning person.

"I'd like you to come meet with me sometime today, if you don't mind".

Soul wondered what Kid could possibly want so soon after they had achieved their objective of rescuing Crona. "Err, are you sure you don't want to just talk about it now? I was gonna swing by the library later and then visit Maka this afternoon."

"Excellent, then you can come by the Death Room before you go to the library".

His tone had an air of finality to it, and Soul resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't getting out of whatever it was Kid wanted.

He knew he was being lazy, but he'd just wanted to savor a few days of peace and quiet with a mended Meister and a recuperating Crona and all his friends before something disturbed the fragile peace.

_Oh well_, he thought, as he mounted his motorcycle later that morning, ready to meet the future. At least he'd been planning on heading up to Shibusen anyway.


	3. Meditations of a young reaper

Warning for: Language

* * *

Death the Kid, reigning Lord of Death, leaned over his desk, shoulders sagging from stress and exhaustion.

He let out a long sigh and flexed his fingers before splaying them over the documents he had neatly arranged in _two very precise piles_ before him.

He was not looking forward to this conversation, and it was clear that Liz and Patty had caught on to his bad mood, because they had declined his offer to let them go back to the Gallows without him and remained by his side.

He had been subtly trying to get them to leave so that he could speak privately with Soul, because if he had told them outright, it would have led to a barrage of questions that he didn't feel like answering until after the meeting was over.

It was unusual for him to keep things from his weapons, but in this case he felt discretion was neccessary as the matter related to their friends, and he knew that Liz and Patty's sense of loyalty to their friends might prompt them to argue with his decision, whether because they truly disagreed or because they felt they ought to protest out of solidarity with Soul and Maka. And he wanted to spare them the effort and the worry and just get it over with.

He was already going to be the source of enough grief today...

He felt his face twitch slightly with the telltale sign that he had overlooked something, and he jumped to his feet, heart racing. He looked around, but everything seemed to be in order.

Since his ascension to the throne, the Death Room had changed considerably in appearance. In his father's day, the room had been open and airy, with windows and clouds lazily curling by into a seemingly endless horizon.

Kid's room was flooded with an almost painfully flourescent light, and the walls and floor were impossibly white, glowing with an ethereal haze that only soul-spaces could attain.

The ceilings were curved and ribbed with black, Gothic beams, giving visitors the impression of being drawn within the belly of a great, skeletal beast. A narrow black carpet bisected the room, leading to a pair of rich velvet curtains which were drawn to reveal an inky desk and a multitude of symmetrically placed filing cabinets.

It was here that Kid paced, frantic to find the missing puzzle piece in his carefully constructed plane of existence.

Was it one of the chandeliers? Each had exactly eight spires with black flame merrily flickering and casting skull-shaped shadows.

No... it was... Something else? He scratched his head, before understanding dawned on him.

"Liz!? Did you tuck some of your hair behind your ear again and forget to do it to the other side?"

Her sigh echoed through the impossibly large space. "Please, Kid. That was only once. I'm not stupid enough to trigger you with something like that_again_."

Patty laughed riotously from beside her sister. "It was pretty funny though!" She chortled.

"Why don't you do some meditating? You look especially stressed today. It can't be good for your nerves," Liz admonished.

"Yeah, Kid, your face is goin all screwy, like when you forgot to reset the clocks for Darkness Savings Time!"

"Patty, please don't remind me about that", he sighed. "I think you're right, Liz, some meditating would do me good. It's this situation with the Nordic witches and preparing for Spirit's reassignment as North American Death Scythe."

They looked at him sympathetically, and Patty tripped forward and placed a hug around his shoulders from behind. He patted her hand gratefully.

"Do you want us to stay?" Liz asked, more out of politeness than curiosity. He usually preferred to be alone during his meditation.

"No, thank you. Why don't you ladies head home, and I'll be sure to come by as soon as my meetings are over for the day".

"When will that be?" Patty asked rather sadly. They hadn't gotten to see a lot of their Meister since this trouble had started, and it was wearing on all three of them.

"Patty..." Kid said sternly. "You know that my duties as the Lord of Death mean I have to stay late some nights. But I'll be back by eight o' clock tonight, you have my word."

Patty pouted a little at the news that her Meister would be absent for the rest of the afternoon, but at Liz' beckoning, she left the death room, lured by Liz' promises that they would make the maid set up a tea party for the three of them, plus Patty's band of stuffed giraffes.

After they left, Kid realized that he never had solved the mystery of what was amiss in the Death Room. He smiled faintly, appreciating the affirmation that being around the girls soothed his neuroses, and making a promise to himself that he would set aside more time for them in the upcoming weeks. It was, he supposed, a matter of international, and even celestial, security.

* * *

Kid had taken Liz' advice and begun meditating shortly after the weapons had made their departure, but he had sensed Soul's imminent arrival long before the Death Scythe made his appearance in the Death Room.

Consequently, when Soul slouched across the expanse of black carpet and chandeliers and into Kid's soul-space, his hands firmly in his pockets and scowl firmly placed on his face, Kid had already cleared his desk and made his preparations for their discussion.

"How nice to see you, Soul. Thank you for making time to see me on such short notice". He said graciously, while waving a hand and summoning a chair into corporeality.

Soul whistled faintly. "Nice trick."

Kid smiled. "Thank you. Manipulation of one's soul space has many benefits, not the least of which are seating arrangements available on-demand." He nodded toward the chair. "Please have a seat."

Kid lowered himself onto his thronelike, if rigid, seat a few steps above Soul's and the Demon Scythe followed his lead, collapsing into the newly-summoned chair behind him.

There was a moment of silence, and then Soul leaned forward. "What's all this about, Kid?"

Kid took a deep, measured breath.

"When my father was alive, he often spoke in riddles. He was deliberately vague, gave few or misleading details, and sometimes procrastinated in dealing with serious situations. I myself witnessed this countless times, and promised myself never to repeat those actions as Shinigami. Because of this, I will be brief, and speak frankly to you."

Soul waited.

"I need your help."

"Huh?"

Kid looked down at him, eyes narrowing slightly. "As a Death Scythe, you have a right to know the state of affairs here at Shibusen as well as around the world. As you are aware, I participated in countless meetings with various forces in order to procure Crona's rescue. What may be less clear is that, in order to secure the witches' support, sacrifices had to be made." Kid paused again.

"Such as?" Soul prompted.

"The witches have Brew". Kid said simply.

"Why? What happened?"

"In order to recapture Asura after Crona's ... _extraction_, the witches' Soul Protect power was necessary. During the initial battle on the Moon, the witches were willing to help us because the Kishin posed a threat to their lifestyle as well as to the human world. However, to risk reviving the Kishin, releasing him from his captivity, for the rescue of one descended from a family of heretic witches... Well, politically, there was no reason for them to support us. The benefits amounted to nothing, while the risks..." He trailed off.

"So you gave them Brew, and we got Crona. But we're allied with them, so why is it a problem?"

"It's true the witches have held to the treaty we established four years ago. However, there are many on our side who have not abided by the new rules established following the battle on the Moon. In fact, quite a few DWMA affiliates around the world were particularly discontented with my decision to make you the Last Death Scythe. Many questioned the future of Shibusen altogether – for so long our existence has been predicated upon fighting and hunting witches, and training generations of Meisters to create Death Scythes. Furthermore, with the losses of Justin, Tezca, and Tzar Pushka during the events four years ago, many of our international branches have expressed... _concern_ about the security risks of having so few Death Scythes available around the world to combat the terrors still lurking under the residual madness left behind by the Kishin".

"So people think we ought to still be able to hunt witches, and you're worried that with Brew, the witches will retaliate?" Soul asked.

"Yes. And an unsettling number of reports have reached Intelligence of weapons and meisters effectively going "rogue" and attempting to hunt witches under Shibusen's radar, which has done no wonders for our relations with the witches."

"Ah. So you want me and Maka to go take care of these rogues or something? We can definitely handle that," Soul said.

"Not exactly. I believe Maka's Soul Perception abilities will be particularly helpful in finding and prosecuting these errant Meisters, and I plan to speak with Intelligence about placing her, possibly even having her fill Joe Buttataki's position. But I have a different proposal for you."

Soul's expression did not change.

"Eastern Europe has been missing a Death Scythe since Tsar Pushka's death, and it appears that there is a witch clan in Finland which recently lost one of their own due to a witch hunting by rogues. I plan to send you there to represent the DWMA. It will be a good-faith gesture to assure them that Shibusen takes the treaty seriously, plus you will assist with the operations of the European branch of DWMA and help prevent further rogue attacks."

"But... Joe Buttataki was in Oceania... That's not close to Finland," Soul said slowly.

Kid looked at him sympathetically. "No, it's not".

"What– what are you saying, Kid?"

"I am saying that as a Death Scythe, I need you to take an assignment in Finland."

"But I can't weild myself! Maka needs to come too!"

"That's another thing I need to discuss with you. There have been recent graduates from the European branch of Shibusen who are qualified to weild a Death Scythe-level weapon. I can't bend the rules and send you both over there, not when she's needed elsewhere and while there are competent Meisters who can weild you just as well, not without a compelling reason."

"Just as well? Do you have any fucking idea how hard Maka and I worked to get to where we are? Don't I get any say in this? I may be a weapon, but I'm a person too. You can't just chuck me wherever suits you without consulting with us!"

"I was under the impression that was what I was doing now, Soul." Kid said warily.

"Well, I was under the impression that you gave a fuck about the lives of your friends, Kid," Soul spat angrily. "Maka won't stand for this. You can't break us up. She won't allow it."

"Soul", Kid said, in what he hoped was a placating voice. "Maka has known for a long time that making a Death Scythe meant that she would be forfeiting sole partnership of her weapon. Death Scythes rarely stay with their original Meister once they reach that status. It's part of the job."

"Well, screw the job! I don't want any part of this bullshit! It's always been about Maka, Kid. If I can't be with her then I'm out. I won't give up our partnership unless I die or she tells me to."

Kid sighed. He really had hoped it wouldn't come to this. "Soul... You are being selfish. It isn't like you. Haven't you considered how your refusal to take this post would be hurting Maka?"

"What." Soul's voice was flat, rage barely contained, and Kid knew he had to tread carefully.

"Where would I send the two of you? Spirit will be taking Justin's post and overseeing North America. Patty, Liz, and Marie are more than enough to keep Death City safe... Maka has no future at any of the branches I could send you to. If you refuse to give up the partnership for my sake, at least consider how you may be holding her back from her potential, and think about doing it for her sake."

Soul was chuckling now, with a mirthless, almost demonic look in his eyes. "Wow. I knew some people thought I held her back, but I really expected better from you, Kid." He ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry to burst your bubble, but Maka's the one who makes the calls. And like I told you before, unless she tells me I'm holding her back, I'm gonna be by her side. Now if you'll excuse me, my Meister is in the _hospital_, and I'd really like to see how she's doing." He turned to leave.

"_Soul_". It was not a request, but an imperative. Soul froze in spite of himself, and turned slowly to face Kid. To face... Lord Death.

The eerie light of the Death Room flickered, the shadows cast by the chandeliers lengthening and stretching, and the room shook with some unseen force. It was as though the beast in whose ribcage they were dwelling was growling, rumbling with fury and power. The chandeliers rattled and the skull-shaped shadows twisted and reached for Soul as a howling noise rose up and began to echo from the rafters. The echoes vibrated through the entire length of the death room and the shadows spread until they were encompassing everything, leaving only Soul and Kid in their respective pools of light. Soul raised his eyes to Kid's, only to see that the Reaper's eyes were closed in what looked like restraint. His fists clenched and unclenched, and his reaper robe swirled dangerously. Soul could see the shadows ebbing from his robes, dancing and leaping in a way that was both horrifically reminiscent of, and yet somehow nothing like, the black blood.

The rattling and shaking grew, as did the screams of the shadows, until Soul found himself fighting to stay on his feet, clutching his head, willing it to stop. Kid's eyes snapped open and he threw his arms out. Everything stilled at once.

It was dark now, so dark and cold, the only light coming from Kid's fiercely glowing, amber eyes.

He spoke into the darkness, his voice, deeper and more dangerous than Soul had ever heard it, ringing out.

"You will do as I command. I am your God." It was the voice of a Reaper. A seriously pissed off Reaper.

Soul stumbled forward, falling onto one knee. The lights flickered back to life.

"Do not trifle with me, Soul Eater Evans." The chandelier shadows danced, hissing back Kid's words at him. _Soul Eater Evanssssssss._

Soul kneeled on the ground, willing his stomach to settle and his head to clear. The shadows danced, making his eyes hurt, and their sibilant whispers echoed in his ears and _in his head_.

"Yes. Lord. Death." Soul gritted out between clenched teeth.

The velvet curtains parted unceremoniously and Soul found himself forced back by some unseen energy. Although he did not possess his Meister's capability for seeing souls, he imagined that she would have seen Kid's soul wavelength overwhelming his.

"Go."

Soul did not need to be told twice. He stood shakily and made his retreat, trying not to stumble on the twitching carpet or shudder at the whispering chandeliers.

* * *

After Soul had left, Kid staggered to his desk, hands bracing against it, keeping him from falling, and he felt himself shaking.

After several moments, he looked to the now-empty mirror where his father had once resided.

"Father... I hurt two of my friends today." He whispered softly. It was just as well his father wasn't there.

Kid wouldn't have wanted his father to see him weeping.

* * *

**AN: Thanks again to my betas and to everyone who read, commented, favorited, or followed!**


	4. Books by the bedside

Warnings for: Puke, language

* * *

Soul stumbled his way out of the Death Room, clutching his stomach and trying to get his head on straight, so maybe that was why he hadn't been watching where he was going.

Consequently, he ran straight into a certain ninja-turned-_bushin_ who was rounding a corner with his weapon in tow.

"Hey! I know I'm magnetic but DAMN! You should really announce your presence before running into me, I'm your GOD! Hyahahaha!"

The words, an echo of what he had just heard in the Death Room, sent a wave of nausea through Soul and he gagged violently.

He should have turned.

He should have stepped away.

He should _not_ have vomited all over Black*Star.

Soggy bits of toaster-strudel jetstreamed out of Soul and plastered Black*Star's still-grinning face, and his expression as he was pelted with half-digested food and hot stomach acid would have been priceless if Soul had been in any mood for laughing.

Soul leaned over, heaving onto the linoleum. Black*Star stood frozen, grin on his face twitching sightly as puke slowly slid off his face in globs. "Tsubaki." He gritted out from between clenched teeth. "Did. This. Asshole. Just. Fucking. Puke. On. My. Godly. Visage?"

On another day, Soul would have been impressed that Black*Star had learned that word for "face", but this was not the day.

"Oh no... Soul, are you okay?" Tsubaki asked worriedly, stepping out from behind Black*Star (he had unwittingly caught the brunt of the vomit and it seemed she had been spared). She put a gentle hand on his shoulder and he wiped his mouth and straightened his spine, trying to avoid their eye contact.

On another day, Soul would have chided himself for being so uncool, but this was not the day. Coolness was the farthest thing from his mind at the moment, and his thoughts were racing with a dizzying speed.

It felt like the world had slowed down, with only occasional, painful, jagged reminders cutting into him to let him know that he was still here, and not stuck in his head. He took several deep breaths, gauging whether he could safely walk without heaving again.

"Yeah. I'm... fine. I gotta go." He turned mechanically, and took shaky steps toward the library, ignoring Black*Star's indignant shouts and Tsubaki's soothing tones and letting his feet carry him without thinking, his brain focused on more pressing matters.

Like what he was supposed to tell _Maka_.

He went to the library so that he could calm down, and because he thought maybe he would feel better if he could put off going to see her, but once he was there all he wanted was to be by her side.

He always sought his Meister out when he was troubled, even if he didn't tell her what was wrong. She'd be able to tell he was upset anyway, with her uncanny Soul Perception. She was lavish with her affection and readily opened her arms and heart to him when he was upset, and he was embarassed at how much of a neccessity it had become to bring his problems to her, to let her wavelength calm him, to let her smile brighten his dark moods.

It was cheesy and stupid, but that pretty well described all of his feelings toward Maka when she wasn't braining him with a dictionary.

He hoped she couldn't tell how much he _depended_ on her, because it was pathetic and embarassing and it even made him feel a little stalkerish.

And with the thought of losing that – of losing _her,_ looming over him... His stomach roiled again, and he hurried to the New Releases section of the library, not even bothering to look for the books she'd told him to bring. He pulled a few off the shelf at random, stuffed them into his jacket, and nearly ran out of the library, with the librarian's startled cry ringing in his ears.

* * *

By the time he arrived at the Dispensary, he had calmed enough to plaster on a nearly passable poker face, so that no one but Maka would probably even pick up on the fact that anything was wrong.

He even slowed his walk down to a saunter, thrust his hands in his pockets casually, and strolled into the infirmary with books under both of his arms.

"Where's Maka?" He asked Nygus, who was changing the sheets on the bed that had held his Meister the last time he'd visited.

"She's cleared to go home, but she's seeing Crona right now." Nygus responded. "You can go join her, if you like".

"I don't want to intrude..." Said Soul, pausing. He knew how important this visit would be for Maka, tried not to think about how if she got transferred abroad, it might be one of her _last _with Crona. He knew how shy Crona was and how likely it was that the mood would sour once he announced his news that Maka was probably moving to somewhere in Oceania.

Nygus' face was grim. "There's not much to intrude on. Go on ahead, Soul."

He followed the jerk of her head to the wing of the dispensary where a curtain had been drawn around a corner bed. This must be where Crona was. He could _feel_ Maka there, and if he listened hard, he could make out her voice, whispering something.

He paused outside the curtains, unsure despite Nygus' assurances if he ought to enter.

"Soul". Came a steady voice. His Meister. He opened the curtains, and there she was, beside a sleeping Crona.

He resisted the urge to smoosh her into a neverending hug and tell her not to let Kid tear them apart, but instead he cracked a smile and answered "Hey".

She reached out, and his first instinct was that she wanted to take his hand, and he looked at her confused before realizing she was expecting the books.

He handed them over rather sheepishly, and she raised her eyebrows. "Uh..."

"Sorry. They didn't have the ones you wanted". He didn't feel like explaining right now, in front of Crona, in the infirmary. But Maka could definitely sense that something was wrong. He knew she would be picking up distress signals from his wavelength.

"Did you even look?" She asked him, but there was no bite in her tone.

He shrugged.

"Soul..." Maka looked at him, and he noticed her eyes seemed a little red. Maybe it was the light.

"Stein says that Crona's in a coma... He doesn't know when, or... _if_ they'll wake up". Her voice cracked a bit.

_Fuck it_, he thought, and reached for her hand. At this rate, the smooshy hug was looking more and more likely. First the meeting with Kidd, and now Crona. Why did _everything_ have to suck _so badly_?

"They'll wake up, Maka. It will be okay". He told her with as much confidence as he could muster.

She nodded. "Yeah. I know. It's just hard waiting. But Crona waited for us for four years, so I will be patient. We have time."

He almost broke right then and there. They _didn't_ have time, but how could he tell her that?

"I already tried poking around their wavelength a bit, just to see," She admitted without any hint of shame.

He tried, failed, to smile.

"Of course you did."

She smiled weakly, continuing to look at Crona. "I didn't want to do too much without you here, though. I thought if anything happened, it would be good to have you to pull me back."

"Yeah," he said throatily.

She tore her gaze away from Crona then, and looked at him with concern. "Tell me what's going on with you, Soul. What happened?"

"Can we get out of here? Nygus said you're good to leave, right?"

He could tell she was reluctant to leave Crona, but she nodded and stood up to gather her things. He waited impatiently.

The sooner they got home, the sooner they could figure out a way out of this mess.

Because he refused to accept it. Now that he'd gotten away from Creepy Kid and was far from the effects of the Death Room, he felt more confident about his ability to advocate against the dissolution of their partnership.

Or maybe that was a lie he was telling himself in order not to fall apart all over his Meister while they were in public.

* * *

She left the books he'd brought by Crona's bedside table, and they'd made their way out of the Dispensary in near silence.

The ride back to their apartment had flown by, and Soul was glad to be home, although having his Meister's arms wrapped around him as he drove made him feel more calm and secure than he'd care to admit.

* * *

He'd explained the jist of what Kid had told him, skimming over the embarassing details like bowing to Kid and throwing up all over Black*Star.

When he was finished, she sat very, very still, hands clenched in her lap.

He waited. The refrigerator began to hum, and someone in the apartment next to theirs flushed a toilet.

He waited.

A car backfired down the street. Students drifted by, chattering eagerly about their evening plans.

He waited.

Finally she spoke.

"This happens. We knew this when you– when you became a Death Scythe. Partners break up". Her voice was hard, brittle like glass.

This was it. The words he'd been expecting since he first played the piano for her, the better part of a decade ago. He'd heard them in the Book of Eibon, and he'd thought it would destroy him if he couldn't convince her to take him back, to make _them_ whole again.

At the time he'd known that the book was influencing her. Whatever she saw in the Envy chapter had affected her so deeply that she was making uncharacteristic decisions, not thinking clearly. He'd hoped that was the case anyway, although he hadn't truly believed it until Giriko attempted to assault her and she had gone limp as he pinned her to the ground. The sight of his partner, helpless and apathetic beneath an 800 year-old misogynist convinced him beyond all doubt that she wasn't _herself_ in that chapter.

Now was not that time. She was undeniably in possession of all her faculties. But, as in that chapter, he still found himself poised to disagree.

He knew she didn't want this.

"Maka. Did you mean what you said, on the moon, about staying together?"

"Soul, it doesn't matter, I was being foolish." She let out a strangled noise, something like a sob, and he could feel her wavelength reaching out for him, clinging to him and betraying the resolution her words implied.

If she'd been trying to keep her emotions out of this, she was doing a terrible job. That was definitely more his area of expertise than hers, and damned if he wasn't going to call her out on it.

"Maka. Forget about Kid. Forget about the missions, the duty, all that shit. Look at me."

She did.

"You said you didn't want me to leave. Do you still feel that way?"

She nodded.

"I promised we'd always be together. I haven't forgotten that, okay?"

"Okay". It came out as a whisper.

They sat there, looking at each other, until Maka spoke again.

"We'll figure this out. One way or the other, we're staying together."

Her eyes blazed with determination, and he sagged in relief. His Meister had made up her mind. There was no stopping them now.

* * *

**A/N: This was half of the chapter I had planned. Stay tuned for tomorrow to find out how our favorite pair decide to deal with this new threat to their partnership! ;) Don't forget to leave me a review if you liked it, and let me know your thoughts!**


	5. Indecent Proposal

Soul looked at his Meister with a mixture of exasperation and admiration. For once, he was thoroughly glad that she was such a nerd. She'd thrown herself into brainstorming every possible angle which they could use to petition Kid not to dissolve their partnership, and was hunched over a massive spiral-bound pad of paper, hastily scrawling, circling, and crossing out words. She'd dragged the drawing board out of her closet with a frightening gleam in her eye and tried propping it against the television before giving it up and spreading it across the living room floor.

"Is this what you do when you're studying for a test?" He asked her. "You're more insane than I thought."

"Shut up, Soul," she told him. "Meisters had to get this drawing pad for Battle Strategy class a couple years ago."

He supposed it was appropriate to use the drawing pad for this. Saving their partnership had to be the most terrifying battle he'd ever faced. Their ideas ranged from faking their own deaths on a mission to kidnapping Crona and escaping to the Swiss Alps (okay, both of those ideas were his, and Maka nixed them pretty early on).

They stayed up until the early hours of the morning, going over options and ideas.

Blair came in through the window at about midnight and joined in, although most of her ideas had little to do with helping Soul and Maka maintain their partnership and more to do with taking Kid to Chupacabra's and getting him laid so he would stop being so "mean" to her kittens.

Desperate as they were, they'd almost been willing to seriously consider her idea at one point, before deciding that Kid was either gay or asexual.

Then they'd made a bet on which.

"He ran into a girl's shower room and tried to help Kim and Jackie wash themselves so they could get back to the mission! He didn't even get a nosebleed! He doesn't have a sexual bone in his body!" Maka had said.

Soul thought this was pretty funny, coming from his Meister, "All-Men-Are-Lecherous-Scum" herself.

"Heh, no, but he'd probably _like_ to–"

"Soul!" Maka squeaked loudly. He grinned at her. "What? It's not a big deal Maka. It just means he likes the di–"

She clapped a hand over his mouth before he could continue scandalizing her with his graphic descriptions of what Kid might do in his spare time. "You're so immature. But he definitely would have told us, wouldn't he? We're his friends." Maka mused.

"I dunno, are we? I kinda fucking hate him right now," Soul said darkly. He took her silence as confirmation that she too, was pissed at Kid.

"Well, what now?" Maka sighed, as she turned back to the drawing board to cross out "Operation: Chupacabra's"

Eventually, they'd been so tired they'd decided to just rest a little bit, just for a _minute_, before continuing the brainstorming session.

And that was how they had ended up sprawled across each other on the couch, Maka's pigtails coming undone and Soul snoring gently, drooling past his sharklike teeth with abandon.

Blair woke from her kitty basket to see her favorite humans draped against each other, the tension and anxiety of the night before drained from their faces.

She transformed into her human shape, ready to pounce on her Scythe-boy and smother his sleeping form in her ample bosom, when she saw something else that made her pause.

Sometime in the night or early morning, whether sleeping or awake, her kittens had reached out and clasped hands.

Blair smiled wide and turned around, making sure to be quiet as she tiptoed out the front door. _Finally_, she thought to herself.

* * *

Hours after the rest of Death City had awoken, the pair were still unconscious. Eventually Soul woke up first, although he was unable to move properly because of the crushing weight of his Meister's legs over his stomach. His own leg was trapped under her torso and was still just as soundly asleep as Maka was.

He'd had a strange dream and he still felt fragments of it dancing behind his eyes. There had been labored breathing, and desperate friction, and he had felt the urgency of it gathering in the pit of his stomach. As he gained lucidity, his memory of it ripped like an old spiderweb and he was only left with the impression of green eyes and ungloved hands. He felt a heat in his face that had nothing to do with the human space heater who was tangled up in his legs. Well, _almost nothing_, he told himself.

He tried to move his arm and noticed that he was holding her hand. When had that happened?

Their wavelengths were so well-matched after their years of partnership that they often resonated on a basic level while they were sleeping, especially on missions where they had to sleep in close proximity, and it was unsurprising that they might have adjusted to hold one another in response to their souls' inclinations, but Soul could not stop staring at her hand, and trying to detect the difference between the hand in his dream and the hand in front of him now. When he realized what it was he felt like facepalming. How uncool of his subconscious.

And yet, and yet...

_"A compelling reason." _That's what Kid had said it would take, for him not to reassign them.

He stared so hard he felt like he might spontaneously develop Soul Perception for hot sweaty hands and numb legs and sleeping Meisters. An idea began to form, one which took on a life of its own and made him feverishly giddy.

This idea could work. He just needed to figure out how to tell Maka.

When Maka finally woke up, she yelped with concern upon seeing the clock on their microwave. "Death, Soul! It's almost 2pm, why'd you let me sleep so late?"

He looked at her from his perch at the dining room table where he was munching on slightly burnt toast. "Sorry. I figured you were tired, since we were up so late."

"I promised Crona I'd be back for visiting hours!"

Soul didn't comment that Crona almost certainly wouldn't notice, because what the hell did he know? Maybe the comatose swordsman emwould/em notice if Maka wasn't there.

"Crona waited four years on the moon. I'm sure they'll forgive you for being late to visiting hours."

She didn't bother to respond, running into her room to get dressed before emerging a few minutes later with her pigtails fixed and her shoes on. She accepted the least-burnt piece of toast that he'd saved for her and wrenched open the door.

"I'll be back. Keep thinking about ideas."

Then she was gone, and he resumed his planning.

* * *

She returned a few hours later and joined him where he still sat at the kitchen table, several more stacks of severely burnt toast piled around him.

She raised her eyebrows in question, and he groaned. "I kept getting hungry, and then I'd be distracted thinking about all this shit, and I forgot. Nearly set off the fire alarm too..." he grumbled. She smiled. "I'll make dinner for us tonight," she promised, and tried not to laugh at the stark relief that played across his face.

"How'd it go with Crona?" he asked. Her cheerful expression soured, and he felt her wavelength pulse with sadness and stubborn hope.

"I can see their soul, but they aren't letting me in. I'm gonna need your help next time, Soul. Remember, last time, when we resonated and I managed to match Crona's wavelength by surrendering to the madness of the black blood?"

"Yeah Maka, thanks for reminding me, I don't think I'll ever fucking forget that", said Soul.

She rolled her eyes. "And what happened?"

"After you were done trying to eat Crona's head?" He smirked. "You used the anti-demon wavelength to purge the madness from Crona. Ragnarok shrank and everything, and Crona stopped being a pre-Kishin."

"Exactly". She chewed her lip. "I've just been thinking, if part of what's keeping Crona comatose has something to do with the madness, what if I did something like that again? It could help. Crona needs someone to reach out to them, from a soul-space. I've done it before so I think I can do it again, even without using the madness."

Soul sighed. He didn't particularly like her idea. When they had done it before it was a matter of life and death, and Maka was seconds away from being slashed by Ragnarok's blade. Now it was purely voluntary, an experiment, and he felt nervous about the risk his Meister was taking.

Nevertheless, she was the Meister, and he would follow her decisions. He knew she understood the risks.

Even more importantly, he knew that once she made up her mind to do something, she would do it with or without his help. And she would need his help, he was sure of it. So of course he agreed.

She smiled and put her hand over his. "Thanks, Soul", she said softly.

He gulped. "Is this where you go all mushy and start talking about how much my friendship means to you? Because we can skip that," he said.

He expected her to hit him, to grin, to tease him back. He didn't expect her to look so thoughtful, like she really took his words to heart. She shook her head. "Soul... I can't do this without you by my side. Any of it. We've got to come up with a way to keep Kid from sending us away from each other."

"Oh yeah, about that..." He looked at her sneakily, out of the corner of his eye. "I think I may, uh, have figured out a good idea that would work."

Her head snapped up. "Really? What is it?"

"Uh, just hear me out, okay, and don't get too freaked out because it's just an _idea_, okay? And _don't_ take it the wrong way." The last thing he needed was a concussion.

She nodded eagerly.

He swallowed. "Marry me?" It came out hoarse, and much louder than he expected, and the silence that followed was almost painful.

Okay, so he hadn't exactly proposed in the coolest way.

She sat in stunned silence for a bit before launching herself from her seat at the table and coming to stand above where he sat, throwing her hands up in the air.

"Marry!? You? You can't come up with anything better than that?"

"I dunno, unless you just wanna get knocked up like Marie did? I'm sure that would work just as well". He said, sitting back and snickering. Okay, he was pissed at her reaction to his... proposal, and he was reacting childishly, not even hesitating to blab the first retort that came to mind. It was only once she blushed a furious shade of red that he realized, too late, the implications of what he had just said. Dear Death, he really hadn't meant to imply that _he_ would be involved in knocking her up... Really hadn't thought that one out at all. _Real cool, Soul,_ he thought as he cringed inwardly. But it was too late now, he had to play along or he would look even more uncool.

Even as her hand inched towards the dictionary on the counter, he kept babbling himself into a deeper and deeper hole. "We can get started on that right away, if you want. My door is always open, _babe._" He managed to pair it with a suggestive, if somewhat nervous, grin before her hand met the hard-bound cover it had been seeking and he fell off the chair and crumpled to the floor.

The Maka Chop was swift and painful. He couldn't even bring himself to do more than give her a token complaint, because he knew he had totally deserved it. In fact, if she hadn't done such a thorough job, he probably would have chopped himself.

He still might, once he was alone. "Owwwww", he groaned loudly, rolling from side to side and clutching his head, afraid it might actually have split open this time.

She spun around and left him where he lay, stomping out of his sightline with an intimidating level of force.

Since when had he become so desperately uncool that he thought it was acceptable to casually offer to impregnate his partner? Who fucking _did_ that?!

As he fretted internally, he peeled his face off the floor and crawled over to the couch.

Head still smarting from her attack, he idly flipped channels on the tv, scowl set firmly on his face. He could hear Maka banging around in the kitchen now, setting rice to a simmer (she ordered him not to let it burn while she was showering) and then shutting herself into the bathroom, closing the door behind her a little harder than necessary.

He let out a sigh of relief once the water was running.

Then he went through his mental catalogue of "save face, regain coolness points" that he hadn't had too much use for in the past couple years. But if he was going to act like an immature kid again (and if today was any indication, he was), he might as well use an immature kid's tactics to salvage whatever was left of his dignity. He could tease her about her chest or her ankles, just to ensure she knew he wasn't creeping on her or serious about his suggestion... But her ankles had never been fat and her chest really wasn't _quite_ as small as it used to be, so the insult had lost some of its potency.

He could distract her by bringing up something nerdy, like Stein's latest theory on long-distance resonance... But she would definitely suspect. He never talked about academic stuff if he could avoid it.

He could pray that one of their friends would call, or Blair would come home, and she'd forget about it until he came up with something. Yeah, that was a good idea. He'd get a feel for how angry she was when she finished her shower, and proceed from there.

Cool guys took the path of least resistance... At least, around Maka, they did.

* * *

The plot thickens... How was that for a romantic proposal scene, eh? EH?


	6. Maka's Answer

That boy was going to be the death of her.

Maka turned on the water and stood in the shower, not moving, just letting water run all over her while she tried to sort through the confusing whirl of new developments that had just occurred.

First he asked her to _marry him_, then he told her not to take it the wrong way..

_Then_ he practically propositioned her, suggesting that she get pregnant to save their freaking partnership!

Well if she'd learned one thing from her parents, it was that having a baby together was no guarantee of a good partnership. So if that wasn't the worst idea she'd ever heard, she didn't know what was. It didn't help that she was blushing like a freaking lobster, from her hairline to her toes! Her skin felt hot and she absently adjusted the water temperature to cool herself off.

Death Dammit, why couldn't she get her shit together?

His idea about getting married actually had potential, if she thought about it.

It's just that she hadn't thought about it– she'd been so startled when he brought it up, so unable to deal with the sudden collision of the Soul she fantasized about and the Soul who actually lived and worked with her, that she had reacted violently to cover a much more terrifying truth.

The truth of how much she had wanted to take him up on that stupid, pervy offer... Even though she knew he'd been joking when he said that.

He didn't want her like _that_, never had. He'd made that clear with his jokes about her bossiness, her small breasts. She had fat ankles, she was boring, she was a bookworm, she was the farthest thing from cool. And that was fine. She liked it, even, the safety that came with the certainty that there would never be anything from his end. That any feelings that ever developed were under her control, that the only emotions she had to be accountable to were her own.

Sometimes she slipped up, though, and today she'd been on the verge of making all kinds of fatal mistakes.

Even a simple gesture like putting her hand over his had made him uncomfortable, and she burned with shame at the memory of him asking if she was going to start gushing about what he meant to her. And oh, she could have gushed about all sorts of little, mundane things that made her heart seize painfully when she thought about them for too long.

The satisfaction she received out of the way his hand sought hers when it was time to transform, the way he always burnt the food, but saved the least-burnt parts for her, the fact that he knew exactly what brand of tampons she used and routinely picked them up during grocery expeditions without even a second thought. These were not romantic gestures, but they were what she had.

They'd never be anything more, but she could pretend. It was safer this way. Fantasize only about what you can't have. Keep your walls up. Let yourself love. Let yourself trust. But only for someone who couldn't return those feelings, who could never know about those feelings.

It was the perfect arrangement. Maka Albarn would only hurt herself. No one else need be involved. No man would hurt her, and Soul would never be the wiser. And her certainty that he didn't see her in that way was the only reason she thought she had let herself become this close to him.

She wanted him, but she knew that the wanting him and the _having_ him were two different things. If she ever had him, she didn't know what she'd feel. She didn't know what she'd do. But she could pretend so well that she could sometimes fool herself, and if pretending to love Soul while hiding her real feelings was what it took to keep their partnership alive, well, Maka Albarn could pretend like a freaking _champion_.

* * *

Soul sat on the couch, occasionally pressing the bump on his head where Maka had chopped him earlier, and dreading the moment the water would be turning off and his Meister would be getting out of the shower to decide his fate.

Strangely, while he dreaded the moment, he also found the idea of his Meister all angry, flustered, and wet from the shower, dressed in nothing but a towel, rather intriguing. If asked why, he would have blamed the head trauma.

What was even better than that image, though, was that when she emerged from the shower, she didn't seem that mad. She ran out of the bathroom with her towel wrapped securely around her frame and turned off the burner (he guiltily yelled from his place on the couch that he was watching it, it wouldn't have burned) and then went into her room to dress. When she came out, towel around her neck, splotchy with moisture from her damp hair, she crossed in front of the tv, and stood there with her hands on her hips, waiting.

He sighed and turned off the television. "What? Come to give me more brain damage?"

"No." She said tersely. "I want you to explain."

"Explain what?"

"What you were thinking. What's your idea?"

He sat up. Did this mean she was actually considering it?

"You really want to hear it? I don't know if you'll like it."

"It's okay... Just... Let me make some tea and we can sit down and talk about it."

He nodded.

"And Soul?"

He looked at her. She was fidgeting a bit, but her eyes were determined and her gaze was steady. "Sorry for earlier. I know that you're just as stressed about this as I am. I trust your judgement, and I'll listen to your idea before I dismiss it next time, okay?"

He was floored, but he tried not to let it show. "Yeah whatever, Maka, it's cool. I'm sorry too, for the, y'know. Yeah. Just– just make the tea."

Minutes later, she had joined him on the couch and sat, mug clasped in her hands, feet planted on the floor. She looked on edge, and he tried not to think about whether it was because of this new threat to their partnership or because the thought of marrying her weapon was repulsive to her.

He cleared his throat and prepared to explain his reasoning. "Think about it. If we married, they couldn't just send us to opposite sides of the globe to fill empty posts. And if we were living together, there'd be no reason to assign us new partners, since it would just be more convenient for us to work together and all."

"I guess it kind of makes sense... I don't really see another way we're both going to get what we want. There's no other way we can justify staying together and taking missions together and not being reassigned to new partners", she said slowly

"Yeah, and I really don't want to have anyone else poking around in my soul, you know? We haven't really seen the black blood since you purified it on the moon, but what if it comes back when your anti-magic wavelength isn't there or whatever?"

She tapped her fingers thoughtfully against her chin. "Hmmmm... Maybe if we brought that up, Kid would listen, maybe he'd understand–"

"Kid can't do anything about this, and the last time I tried to argue with him he went all Exorcist on me."

They met eyes. Soul thought Maka was probably seeing the tension in his soul. Ever since that argument with Kid– er, _Lord Death_, he'd been on edge at any mention of the reaper.

He cleared his throat and continued. "'Sides, He's got his hands tied. We were already pushing our luck getting him to approve Crona's rescue. He had to retain your dad and Black*Star and Tsubaki _and_ us for that, when we all could have been out filling those empty posts."

"You're right". She sighed. "I suppose he's already bent the rules enough for us, and he's definitely getting accused of favoritism after he let you stay here and work on the Crona rescue when Oceania _and_ South America are still needing a Death Scythe. It really is too bad that Marie couldn't take either of those posts."

He held his breath at her mention of Marie, given her role in their latest argument, but when she didn't say anything else, he figured it was safe to respond. "At least Marie got what she wanted. She's finally in a position to retire and she's got a husband to boot."

"Yeah, but I don't know how she manages to sleep at all when she lives at Stein's lab" Maka wrinkled her nose and Soul chuckled.

"Definitely. Place's creepy as fuck."

"Maka shivered and took a sip of her tea.

"You cold?" Soul offered her a corner of the blanket he was currently snuggled beneath. She accepted it gratefully, worming her way under the blanket and curling her legs up. She lay on her side, propped up on an elbow, thoughtfully staring at the swirls of steam rising from her mug.

Soul sat with his back against the arm of the couch, his legs bent at the knee, feet brushing Maka's legs. He patiently waited as she mulled things over. He knew that if there was an angle he hadn't considered, Maka would make sure to bring it up. She made the ultimate decisions in their partnership, and he followed her lead

"Okay..." She breathed out. "But, do you think it will be weird?"

"Huh?"

She flushed and buried her face in her mug. "Y'know, Soul, when people decide to marry, most people expect them to be in love."

"Oh, yeah. I know that" he griped. "People might think it's weird that a cool guy like me is marrying a tiny-tits like you."

"Or that I'm marrying a twenty-year old with the maturity of an eight year old? Besides, I'm a B-cup now! They aren't _that_ tiny!"

He scoffed. "Coulda fooled me."

He probably deserved the Maka Chop. It didn't make it hurt any less, though.

Once she had resettled and he lay there contemplating the possible longterm effects of years of Maka chops, she hummed thoughtfully. "Don't you think it's... wrong, to deceive everyone? To make them think we're getting married for normal reasons? I mean, at the very least we're making things much harder for the academy, and we're breaking all sorts of rules and kind of betraying people's trust."

He hadn't considered that. To be honest, though, he didn't really care what other people thought, and he told her so. "Maka, I know it isn't ideal, but I really don't give a fuck who we inconvenience. It may be uncool, but that's the truth. Anything that lets me be your partner and stay with you is worth it, in my book."

She took his hand in hers then, and he gave it a squeeze.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"I'll marry you."

She looked a little pale, but her voice was steady, and when she looked at him, he could see the determination, the hope, and the anticipation he was feeling reflected in her green eyes.

He felt relief wash over him. For the first time since the conversation with Kid, he felt like there might be a chance to keep his world from collapsing. Just maybe.

"But we'll need to make some ground rules. So it doesn't get... weird."

He snorted.

"And you have to be there when we tell my Papa."

Soul was devoutly grateful that he had refused her offer of tea earlier, because if he had been drinking anything he would have spit it out all over himself.

* * *

AN: How do you think the meeting with Spirit is going to go? (Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter! It was one of my favorites to write, although I've got some more things coming up that were also fun to play with. If you liked this one, let me know in the reviews!)


	7. Warning Signs

Warning for: Language

* * *

Although Soul managed to avoid round two of the barfing disaster from earlier in the week, Maka must have sensed how twitchy he had become over the past few days.

She approached him as he was chopping vegetables for dinner. His back was turned to her, and he was slicing through carrot and celery with a scythed finger.

"Hey," She said, leaning on the counter.

His shoulders stiffened.

"Dont worry, we don't have to tell him just yet."

"How long do I have?" he choked out, the self-pity in his tone reaching astonishing levels.

"Honestly, Soul, it will be _fine_. Stop being such a baby about it."

For about the millionth time since they had concocted their fake marriage scheme, Soul's Meister was trying to convince him that after telling Spirit Albarn about their engagement, things would be "fine". Soul knew she enjoyed antagonizing her father just as much, if not more, than he did, but she clearly had no idea what was in store.

"Maka, have you met your dad? I seriously doubt things will be fine."

"I already told you that if he threatens to castrate you again, I'll protect you!"

He groaned. "I don't need you to protect me! I'm not afraid of Death Scythe."

"Then what's the problem?"

"I dunno Maka, call me sentimental, but I suffer from serious secondhand embarassment whenever I see a grown man cry".

She frowned. "Well, that's pretty unfair! The social construct that tells men they aren't allowed to have emotions is gross, and you know how I feel about it!"

Soul had to resist the urge to facepalm. "Maka", he said evenly, "That's fine, but your old man is insane. What if he tries to break into our apartment again?

They both stood in silence, lost in solemn remembrance of the time Spirit had crawled through their living room window during breakfast. It had been after one of his more flagrant transgressions, and Maka had been refusing to speak to him for three weeks straight. His attempts to set things right had not gone as planned, obviously, but ever since the incident, Soul was constantly wary of Death Scythe bursting in on the scene whenever he was in the middle of anything he wished to keep private.

Even Maka looked a little pale at the memory.

"Well, like I said, we won't have to tell him just yet. I want to get Crona back before we tell anyone."

He looked up then.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded.

"We don't know when Kid was planning on sending us away, but it sounds like it's gonna happen pretty soon. We should probably tell him about the... engagement, as soon as we can, so he can make other arrangements."

"I know. That's why we're getting Crona back _tomorrow_."

His scythe finger slipped a little, and he nicked his thumb on his own blade. _Stupid._ It was one thing to cut himself on a regular knife, but there was something infinitely embarassing at accidentally cutting yourself on your own blade. So much for proprioception...

He hissed in annoyance, and began to inspect his finger ruefully.

"Soul!" Maka grabbed his hand. Her eyes went a little cross-eyed as she examined the blood leaking out of the cut.

He wanted to laugh at her expression, but all thoughts of laughter were abruptly cut off as she slid his thumb into her mouth, sucking it gently between her teeth and swiping her tongue across the top where he had sliced himself.

All of Soul's thoughts instantly fled to the gutter.

She still held his wrist gently, and she tugged him along with her, wet mouth still enveloping his finger, as she used her other hand to rummage around the drawer beside the sink where they kept spare bandages, ointment, and gauze. Being so constantly in battle had left them both with passable field-medic skills, and Maka went about her task of disinfecting and bandaging his finger with the same efficiency she displayed when patching up a skinned knee.

Even after she had released his finger from its wet, velvety prison and swaddled it in bandages, he was sure he was staring like a deer caught in the headlights. Had his Meister really just done that? Images from the past few minutes or so were still fresh in his brain, blinking like warning signs. Or maybe movie theatre lights. Now Playing: My Meister Just Had My Thumb In Her Fucking Mouth And Oh My God It Was Amazing.

He needed to get a handle on this or the blood leaking from his finger was going to re-route itself right out his nose.

"So anyway, as I was saying, I spoke to Stein and Nygus, and they've agreed to supervise us while we revive Crona, tomorrow morning."

He made a valiant attempt to get his head back on straight. "Cool. So what's the plan?"

Maka smiled.

* * *

Kid sighed for the eighth time that evening as he pored over the new documents Sibusen's Intelligence division had delivered. He'd told himself he wouldn't bring his work back to Gallows Mansion, but here he was nonetheless, pulling another late night in his study, trying not to think of how much would be riding on his diplomatic prowess in the coming days.

As a child, he had fantasized about what it would be like to do his father's job. He wished he could go back to the time when he really looked forward to the day he could commission a replica of Queen Hatshepsut's tomb for the guest bathroom on the fourth floor without having to ask his father's permission. Now, that all seemed so silly and childish. Certainly, the Sphinx currently residing in his favorite bathroom was luxuriously symmetrical; but now that he had it, he couldn't even enjoy a nice moment on the pot without worrying about Shibusen's foreign relations.

He was roused from this line of thought by one of his weapons, who was leaning on the doorframe, pausing on her way to bed.

"Whatcha thinkin' bout, Kid?" Liz worried about her Meister, saw how his golden eyes drooped with exhaustion and his back slumped with fatigue more often than not.

Kid looked up. He imagined that he really_ did_ need some rest, if one of the most familiar souls in his life had managed to sneak up on him.

"Oh, Liz! I'm sorry, I forgot to say goodnight to you and Patty. I know I'd promised to set aside more time for you both, and I'm afraid lately I haven't been a very good Meister... or _friend_, for that matter".

She scoffed. "Hey, don't sweat it. Patty and I understand. You've got a hard job to do, we don't want to add to the list of things you're beating yourself up over".

She had meant to put him at ease, but if anything, he seemed more agitated.

"The way you speak makes it sound as though you and Patty are some kind of burden for me. I would never think of you that way!" He stood up from his desk and began rolling up the documents he'd been reading. "I'm taking tomorrow off and we can all do something together. There was that bonsai exhibit at the Botanical garden that looked simply delightf–"

Liz cut him off before he lost himself expounding on the symmetry of the bonsai exhibit. "Kid, I don't mean to pry, but is there something bothering you?"

"Bothering me?" He blinked.

She walked into the room and dropped into one of the chairs in his study.

"You can talk to us, you know?"

Kid sat back down and tapped his chin thoughtfully. "You're right, I should talk to you about this... You and Patty have always been able to make me see more clearly..."

Liz waited patiently.

"It's... Well, it's lots of things, actually. First of all, it's this matter of the witches."

"Yeah, what's going on with that?"

He fought the urge to sigh for a ninth time, and decided to just speak instead.

"As you know, Grand Witch Mabaa-sama's spatial magic was instrumental in confining Asura for the second time. I have neither the knowledge nor the inclination necessary to wrap my... brother in his own skin as my father had done, so the witches have been invaluable in this area."

Liz cringed. Kid openly mourned his father, but he had been extremely discreet about the fact that Asura was his brother. She still didn't know the extent of Kid's thoughts and feelings about being related to Asura, but she had long ago decided to let him share that with her on his own time, if he wanted.

"Had we had the witches' support from the beginning, Asura may never have escaped, and he certainly could have been taken down much more quickly and efficiently. But of course, that is all in the past now. We have to look toward the future..." He breathed out uncertainly, his amber eyes fixing on some invisible point in the distance as though he was willing himself to actually see the future.

Liz, for her part, was glad he did not possess clairvoyance. Surely Kid had enough pressure in the present without trying to carry the future on his back as well.

"Yes. And...?" She prompted gently.

He snapped out of his reverie and met her eyes.

"No matter how you look at it, the witches are in custody of Asura. He has always been their enemy, and it would not serve their purposes to release him, but the fact that they hold the key to madness and fear, as well as Brew, and that we essentially _gave_ them both, has the potential to be disastrous to Shibusen's public image."

"Oh, Jeez." Liz let out a strangled sound. "Yeah, I can definitely see how that might upset people."

"My father was a man who ruled with no small amount of deceit and secrecy. I have stated from the beginning that it is my wish to operate with transparency and trust. However... From a political standpoint, this is a scandal. And while I don't want to cover it up, I am loath to weaken Shibusen further when there is already unrest within our ranks."

"What do you mean?"

"Intelligence has just sent me documents which indicate the European Shibusen branch is preparing to secede from affiliation with the DWMA."

Liz' jaw dropped. "_What_?"

"They disagree with the pact. They don't trust the witches, and they're hoping to force my hand on the matter. If they make me choose between preserving our unity and honoring the pact with the witches, they believe I will decide in their favor."

As Liz tried to absorb this information, Kid ran his hands over his suit, searching for imperfections. It would feel nice, he knew, to exert a small amount of control, order, even just symbolically, for his peace of mind.

He was almost disappointed to find that he would not get that satisfaction, as his suit was perfectly pressed, wrinkle-free, and lacking a single speck of dust. He took a deep breath. Perhaps it would feel better just to get it all out.

"What's more, Mabaa-sama's heir, a witch from a Finnish clan, went missing on a peace-keeping mission two weeks ago and hasn't been heard from since."

"Mabaa-Sama has an heir?"

Kid gave her a shrewd look. "Well, I hope so. Her disappearance is worrisome, to say the least."

"No, what I meant was, how do the witches even pick an heir? I kind of thought she was immortal, like Free, or something."

"It would appear not. The witches are notoriously secretive, but Mabaa-sama has been taking fewer meetings and relying more upon her representatives as of late. I believe she may be nearing her end, soon."

Liz shivered. She didn't know exactly what happened to their souls when witches met a natural death, and to be honest, she didn't really care to find out. The whole thing was creepy.

"So, any ideas as to what happened to her?"

Kid nodded.

"I have several." He held up a finger on each hand.

"For a witch with the power necessary to become Mabaa-sama's heir to disappear without a trace, there must be something seriously sinister at play. Few magical creatures can kill a witch. Werewolves, the cockatrice, vampires. However, a witch should have been able to sense that. The other option is that a rival witch killed her, perhaps in contest to the throne. And the third one, which I'm sure will be obvious to you, is that she was killed by a weapon and meister."

"But that would never have been authorized."

"No, it should never have been authorized, but the European branch has been operating on a different level from us for several years now. I've overlooked their transgressions until now, but in light of their potential secession and this disappearance, I can't count them out."

"What if it was one of the rogue Weapon and Meister pairs?"

Kid shook his head. "It could have been, but most of the rogues have come out of North America. The European branch has retained those who wish to hunt witches because of their conservative views on the pact."

Liz let out a long breath.

"So, if it turns out that Europe did authorize someone to kill Mabaa-sama's heir?"

"War", Kid said simply. "It means we go to war."

* * *

AN: *Cue the ominous music*


	8. Journey to Crona

Soul awoke that morning with a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. He and Maka had been over the plan again and again, and he trusted his Meister and Shibusen's medical team to give this mission their best shot, but he still felt uneasy.

He tried telling himself that they had gotten safely out of danger the first time on the Moon with Crona, even if they'd had to leave the swordsman behind. And in Ukraine, Soul had managed to beat the Black Blood all on his own, long before Maka finally purified him with her anti-magic wavelength.

With this in mind, how much trouble could a comatose Crona pose?

Still, once he had dressed and brushed his teeth, he refused Maka's offer to join her for breakfast and chose instead to listen to some calming music in his room before they had to leave. He didn't want her to catch his nervousness.

The truth was that he was worried about how his involvement in this scheme was going to play out. Everything they had done previously involved Maka using her Soul Perception to travel to others' soul spaces, as she had in Soul's Black Room and Crona's desert soul. But Maka had already tried going to Crona's soul space and she hadn't been able to get through. So now, she was asking Soul to accompany her. The thought of going into someone else's soul felt weird and almost like a violation, but he knew it was possible even for someone without Soul Perception, since Tsubaki had once mentioned that she had done something similar with her brother, Masamune, in order to defeat the Enchanted Sword.

The ride up to Shibusen was mostly silent, and Soul wondered if Maka was nervous too, or if she was just conserving her energy for what was sure to be an incredible tax on her Soul Perception capabilities.

* * *

When they arrived, Nygus and Stein were at the ready, with two empty hospital beds which were pushed beside the one Crona was currently occupying.

Soul did a double take at the hospital gown Nygus handed him, but Maka didn't hesitate to take hers. She marched off to change in the bathroom and he followed suit in Nygus' office before returning to join the two older adults at Crona's bedside.

"Alright. Let's go over the plan one more time before we begin, shall we?" Stein queried in his signature monotone.

Maka nodded and Soul said nothing, waiting for Stein to begin.

"Maka, you and Soul will begin by resonating. Since Soul no longer has the black blood, you should be able to meet in the space between your souls without _entering_ one another".

The innuendo in this statement was not lost on either of them, if Soul's cough and Maka's blush were any indication. Stein paused and cocked his head to the side. Then he began to twist the screw in his head, dialing it several notches until he appeared satisfied.

"Maka will guide you both to Crona's soul, and you will break through the barrier which has been preventing her from accessing Crona's soul space."

"And you're absolutely certain this won't hurt Crona?" Maka asked anxiously.

"Yeah, I mean, using me to cut Crona's soul space open seems like it might cause some damage..." Soul echoed.

Stein nodded, the flourescent hospital lights gleaming off his glasses. Though he was smiling, his manner was as cold and clinical as ever.

Soul felt goosebumps rising on his skin. He rubbed his arms vigorously as Stein addressed their concerns.

"While it's only a hypothesis, I believe that the black blood shielding you from entering is merely a barrier put in place by the soul to prevent Asura from attacking Crona there during the time they were on the moon".

"In other words," Nygus clarified, "It's not Crona's soul you will be cutting, but a barrier encasing the soul."

"Like Soul Protect," Maka said. "That kind of barrier can be broken without harming the soul itself."

"Yes, very similar," Stein affirmed.

"I can't risk cutting Crona. Their soul is extremely fragile." Maka stressed, though no one was arguing with her.

Soul put a comforting hand on his Meister's shoulder. "Hey, we'll be careful, okay?"

Maka nodded.

"Alright," Nygus said. "Go ahead and lie down. We've pushed these beds close together because proximity helps facilitate resonance. Don't worry if you don't get it on the first try. We aren't sure how long this will take, so we're prepared with backup staff and a night team if necessary. We're in this for the long haul."

Soul wasn't sure he wanted to know how long the "long haul" might be; he just hoped they got in on their first try, grabbed Crona, and came back in time for lunch so he could put all this behind him.

He and Maka adjusted themselves so that Maka lay in the middle bed with Crona and Soul flanking her. She reached out and Soul laced his fingers through hers.

"Ready?" she asked. He grinned. "Yeah, let's go."

"Soul resonance!" They exclaimed in unison.

Resonating while he was in his human form was different from resonating in weapon form. Although their wavelengths were so well matched that resonating on a basic level during daily life wasn't unusual, in battle their stronger resonances always involved Maka wielding him.

He immediately sensed that she, like him, was reveling in the unfamiliar feeling of his resonance in human form. Her hand twitched in his, as though she was subconsciously preparing to weild him. He smiled at that. She increased the resonance, nudging his soul closer to hers until they were wrapped so tightly around one another that he thought he could feel her breathing.

He knew his corporeal eyes were closed, and that his body was lying still in the hospital ward, but he concentrated on Maka's soul and he felt his sense of the outside world slip away as his consciousness joined her in the space between their souls.

* * *

He opened his eyes, taking in the comfortable darkness around him. The only thing clearly visible was the image of his Meister approaching, glowing with ethereal light.

"Hey," he greeted Maka. She smiled and reached for his hand.

"C'mon," she said, pulling him after her. They floated along in the darkness until Soul could make out a small sphere in the distance, emitting a dim light.

"Is that...?"

"Yep," she said softly.

Once they reached it, she let go of his hand and reached out to grasp the soul, bringing it in to cradle against her chest.

Soul felt a small pang of possessiveness at the sight of his Meister embracing another person's soul, and then he realized how stupid he was being. _Get a grip_, he scolded himself.

"Okay, you ready?" she asked, but he'd already caught her intention from their resonance, and she had barely finished her sentence before he disappeared in a flash of blue light and rematerialized in scythe form.

"I'm always ready, Maka." His reflection smirked at her from his blade and she rolled her eyes. "How high do you want to take this resonance?"

"Let's try witch-hunter first and go from there," she said.

Maka began to focus her wavelength and Soul keyed into the vibrations coming from her soul. It was almost second nature now, to match her wavelength and then tune it to harmonize with his own. Together, the music they made was so much stronger than either of them could ever be on their own.

Soul felt his form change with the new surge of power, and he enjoyed the rush of his Meister's thoughts and emotions that came with this level of resonance. He could anticipate her thoughts and actions, feel her emotions as though they were his own.

He braced himself as Maka released Crona's soul and swung his blade at the sphere. A clanging noise echoed through the plane as his blade made contact and ricocheted violently off the surface of the soul.

"Okay. Let's go up. Genie hunter!" Maka yelled, getting back up. Soul felt her wavelength wrapping around him, embuing him with a kind of ethereal armor. He felt her blood flowing through his veins, her adrenaline and power and ambition amping him up and giving him a push, as his form morphed once more. Their souls were entwined now, thrumming with energy and creating a feedback loop that was so intense it was almost painful.

This time when Maka swung him at the soul, Soul felt himself scrape across the edge of the barrier, with a noise like nails being dragged along a chalkboard. It disrupted their melody and he balked momentarily.

"Maka, this isn't working. It's getting worse!"

"Kishin Hunter, Soul!" she demanded, ignoring his hesitation, pushing him to go farther.

He obliged, and suddenly it was like he was seeing through Maka's eyes. But he felt her in his head, too, seeing through his eyes. She'd strained her knee during training last week, and it was aching, and her muscles were sore from routine contact material sessions that kept her fit and limber. He wondered if she could hear the music in his head, the melody that was coursing through him and keeping their resonance strong?

Almost immediately he received confirmation in the form of her unverbalized suggestion that he work on maintaining his Kishin Hunter form so they could overwhelm Crona's barriers. His music had worked before, and she could hear it now. Would it work again?

Maka raised him high and her muscles tensed. She was ready to release his blade onto the hardened sphere and shatter the barrier, and he braced himself for impact.

Impact never came.

_Soul_! She thought, and he instantly understood. His features stretched into a grin and he began to compose a piece of sound to shatter the soul barrier. He'd done this before, years ago, when he and his Meister had journeyed into Asura to find Crona during the first battle on the Moon. At the time, his music notes had served as a path to guide them out of Asura's madness, and ultimately, away from Crona.

But if the music could lead them out of Asura's madness and Crona's black blood, surely it could help break them _through _it as well...

He felt his soul echoing with Maka's wavelength, stroking and tapping softly at her soul's vibrations as though they were the keys of a piano.

As he tugged and pushed at her vibrations and wove them with his own, he could feel a rise in the music, swelling with the melody they were creating. Once it was taut and staccato enough to penetrate the blood barrier, he gave her a mental nudge and she swung him forcefully, his form releasing into waves of sound and blasting at the blackened soul.

The sound knocked Maka off balance, and she recoiled from the blast, using Soul to shield herself from the bright light which was beginning to shine through the cracks in Crona's soul barrier.

"Maka! It's working!" Soul yelled. Maka righted herself and reached for the soul. As they got closer, the light seemed to overwhelm them and Soul could feel the last tendrils of his music drawing to a close, drawing them inexorably to some distant conclusion forged of pain and an almost unbearable fragility.

* * *

Maka's eyes had adjusted to the darkness characteristic of the area between soul planes. As a result, the first thing she was aware of now that they were inside Crona's soul was how bright everything was. She wondered distantly if this is what newborns experienced when they greeted the world for the first time.

They were wearing their Spartoi uniforms, the same clothes they'd been wearing when they rescued Crona. Maka was glad that she hadn't reverted to pre-school age as she did the first time she entered Crona's soul. Her current state was much more suited for wielding Soul, although she supposed it was likely that Soul could have carried her further in his winged form if she had appeared as a four-year old.

Their appearances were not the only thing different in the swordsman's soul, however. The entire plane had changed dramatically from the first time she'd seen it.

"Soul, it wasn't like this before."

The flat, dry earth which had constituted the substance of Crona's soul-space previously was now richly saturated, as though a tide had swept in earlier and drenched everything in glistening moisture. The water wasn't anywhere to be seen now, though, and Maka hoped they could get out before the next tide came in.

"I wonder how tides work when it's in your soul and you're on the moon? What pulls the tides in and out?"

"Figures a bookworm like you would wonder about that," Soul said. "But we need to focus on the mission, Maka. What's that ahead?"

He jerked his thumb to the side, shielding his eyes with his other hand.

"That's it!" Maka exclaimed.

She began to move toward the shape in the distance, tugging him along. "It's a sand castle!"

And so it was, although "castle" seemed too grand a term. The structure resembled a tower, a long, lonely spire reaching endlessly up to a cloudless, blue sky.

Despite her enthusiasm, approaching the castle was not proving to be as easy as it had initially seemed. Maka's feet kept sinking into the wet sand, and each time she pulled her resisting foot out, the squelching earth revealed increasingly dark puddles of liquid in the indentation her foot left behind.

"Is this–?" Soul asked, examining the black fluid, and Maka nodded.

"Yeah, I think so. We need to keep moving!"

"Is it going to be like this the whole way?" Soul asked.

"I don't know! I'm hoping it's only this bad so close to the barrier. Maybe the further we go, the dryer it will get?"

But as they continued on their journey, their feet struggled to gain purchase. The more they struggled, the more the ground began to sink under their feet, drawing them in like quicksand.

"Be careful here!" Maka exclaimed.

"Yeah, no shit!" Soul yelped as black liquid seeped possessively through his pants, which he had rolled to halfway up his calves.

He floundered in the sand, but as he struggled, trying to gain purchase, he began to sink deeper into the mire.

Maka managed to feel like an idiot for not being more careful.

The black blood could not be trusted! Only one person had ever been known to have been infected with it and beaten it all on their own... And that person was currently paddling desperate circles around his waist as he sunk into the blackening sand.

"Soul! Can you transform?" He gave her a startled look, and then he grinned.

In a flash of blue light, he was arcing through the air, landing in her outstretched palm. She wobbled, trying to dislodge her own feet from their mucky prison, but even using Soul for balance, she found that she was well and truly stuck.

"At least one of us isn't stuck!" she said aloud, and he snorted.

"Yeah Maka, I'll just go rescue Crona while you chill over here. I'm sure it'll be a piece of cake for me to walk over there in my _scythe form._"

"Death! Why didn't I think of that? Let's just fly, Soul!"

Soul obligingly materialized his wings and she tightened her grip on his shaft.

"If we can fly up to the castle, I think that will keep us safe from most of it," she told him, panting.

Once they were airborne, she commenced swinging her legs frantically to fling any excess blood as far away as possible.

"That was stupid. I don't know why we didn't think of it earlier," Soul groaned.

"It's okay. Let's hurry!" she urged.

The sun above them never seemed to move in the sky, and the endless light beating down upon them was giving Maka what she was sure would be a terrible sunburn. When she grumbled about it, Soul just asked how someone even got a sunburn on their soul form. She filed the question away for later.

They'd been flying for what seemed like forever, and every time Maka scanned the horizon, the castle was just as far away as it had been when they'd first begun setting out for it.

"Let's stop and rest awhile," Maka told Soul, and he obligingly began to descend.

"Thank Death, I've been needing to take a piss for ages..."

"_Soul_! You can't pee in Crona's soul!"

"Kidding, Maka! Kidding!" he tried to placate her.

"Hmph! Oh, hey, there's a structure with some shade!"

"Make sure there's no black water."

"It _seems_ pretty dry..."

There was no sign of moisture when they touched down, but Maka tested the dryness of the sand with her boot-clad foot before dismounting Soul.

As he transformed, she proceeded to fling herself down onto the sand, only to yelp and scramble back upwards immediately, her back slamming into Soul's chest. He steadied her with his hands on her shoulders.

"Hot! Hot!" she panted, flapping her hands around to cool them off.

He smirked. "That's what happens when the sun is shining on the sand all day, Maka".

"I know that," she said ruefully. "But I guess I forgot how hot it was this close to the earth. I almost wish we were in the air again".

Soul groaned. "Noooo, I'm tired of hauling your heavy ass all over the place. Let's just chill for a bit in the shade".

"You're so lucky I'm too tired to give you a proper Maka Chop," she growled at him. "When we get back you're gonna be seeing stars!"

He grinned at her. No Chop? This was awesome. He wondered how far he could push his newfound luck.

His feeling of good fortune intensified as she began unbuttoning her coat. She shrugged off the coat and lay it on the sand below her with a flourish, and then indulged herself by finally plopping down atop it to sit in the sparse shade.

She took off her tie, loosened the laces of her shirt, and then she unbuttoned her boots and began pouring sand out of them.

He couldn't blame her for wanting to shed her clothes. Outside of weapon form, this close to the ground, his back was sticky with sweat and his legs were sweltering in his denim pants. He pulled off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt until the flaps blew lightly in the breeze.

He snuck a glance at his partially undressed Meister. She was sitting against the geometric structure, legs carefully pulled into the shadow to avoid the sun's harsh rays. Her eyelids drooped and she let out a weary sigh.

He sat there a while longer, happy to catch his breath and escape the heat, even if only for a moment.

Now that he was sitting in human form and not carrying another human on what amounted to his back, Soul could get a good idea of their surroundings. He looked around, focusing only on the things he could see without getting up from his perch. He shouldn't be this tired, but he had a feeling that being in someone else's soul probably had something to do with it. He'd have to ask Maka, since with her extensive nerdy knowledge, she probably knew all sorts of things about soul travel.

When he looked over at her, however, she had her eyes closed and a peaceful expression on her face. So his Meister was as tired as he was! He was glad they'd found shade. He could withstand extreme temperatures in his weapon form, but Maka would have been roasting by now if they'd kept flying. She was sweating lightly and the hair from her bangs was plastered to her skin. He reached out and smoothed some of the hair off her forehead. He wished he had materialized with his headband, so he could give her some more permanent relief. She sighed softly, and he froze, his hand on the side of her face. He hadn't really thought about what he was doing, but if Maka had been awake she probably would have swatted him away. He probably shouldn't be touching her like this, even if it was out of concern.

He let his hand fall and settled for scooting closer to her, wanting to take advantage of the meagre shade this structure provided. He went back to analyzing his surroundings. There wasn't much to take in, besides the castle in the distance.

There was something off about the castle, though. It seemed to be as far away as when they had started. He didn't know what the rules of space were in this soul, but he knew that Maka must have noticed their lack of progress. Once she woke up, they'd have to figure out some new method of travel, because they weren't getting any closer by air.

If they were going to have to travel on foot, he needed to rest. And Maka just looked so peaceful, propped beside him. When her head dropped onto his shoulder and her breathing evened out, Soul found it hard to fight his own eyelids, and he let his head rest against hers. It wasn't the best pillow, but he found he was strangely comfortable.

_Just for a minute_, he told himself. _Then I'll wake up Maka and we'll start walking_.

He felt a breeze drift by, ruffling his hair and blowing through his open shirt. Maka snuffled in her sleep. His eyes closed.

_Just for a minute_.

As Soul felt his consciousness slipping away from him, he began to lose sensation in his left arm, where Maka was leaning on him. He tried to wiggle his fingers but found he could not sense them.

He also failed to sense the figure approaching from a distance.

It bobbed through the sand, making impossible headway, covering distances he and Maka had struggled with for what seemed like hours.

But Soul did not know this.

Because he was slumped against his unconscious Meister, and his sleep-addled world was aware of only the sound of her breathing and the feeling of her skin on his.

* * *

**AN: **Feel free to leave a review and let me know your thoughts! :)


	9. Castle In The Sand

Warning for: Language, smoking

* * *

His patients were stable. Stein decided now would be as good a time as any to step out for a smoke break. Leaving Nygus and the rest of the staff to monitor Soul, Maka, and Crona, he quietly slipped out in search of the nearest deserted balcony.

Ordinarily, he would be loathe to leave a patient's side, especially during a risky procedure, but time had little meaning in soul planes. Neither he nor Nygus knew what to expect in terms of duration for this mission.

They were prepared to wait for days or even longer, if necessary. The most Stein could do was keep an eye on things using his Soul Perception and ensure that Soul and Maka did not slip into a coma alongside Crona.

Upon reaching the balcony, he fished in the pockets of his labcoat, searching out the objects responsible for his departure. He thought about what Marie would say if she knew he had taken up smoking again. He was surprised she hadn't smelled it on his coats yet, which she had taken to washing in a separate load since moving in with him years ago. His lab coats often sported blood and other organic fluids that either stained or were too grotesque for her to mix with her own cheerful yellow skirts and their daughter's pastel jumpers. _Maybe she has noticed, and she just hasn't said anything_, he thought. She might be waiting for the perfect moment to confront him, hit him over the head with the evidence of his indiscretions, using all the weight of Thor's hammer.

No. Marie wasn't capable of being sneaky. It was one of the things he appreciated most about her, her lack of subtlety, her lack of guile. And it was precisely for this reason that he felt guilty for deceiving her, even in such a small matter as this.

He tapped the pack several times and then peeled it open to remove a cigarette. The feel of it between his scarred fingers was both familiar and strangely foreign, as he'd really thought he would give up on smoking for good, years ago during Marie's pregnancy. Things had been stressful lately, though, almost as stressful as the old days of madness. He'd been able to throw himself into research and teaching after Asura's defeat, and having a new wife and baby was a pleasant distraction, enough to keep him from the worst of his habits. Hell, he hadn't even performed unnecessary experiments on a patient in... years.

_Will that start up again, too?_ he wondered. It seemed likely. Kid was keeping him briefed on current events, and judging by the shadows under the Reaper's eyes, Stein was not the only one who was in need of an outlet for stress.

He finished hesitating, lit the cigarette and greedily sucked in a satisfying whiff of nicotine and tobacco.

Well, he had his vices. Victoria was a toddler now, and as long as Marie didn't find out, he could continue to play this little game. Nygus wouldn't rat him out. He hoped.

As he watched the smoke unfurling into the dry Nevada heat, his thoughts drifted back to the pair of former students currently lying in the infirmary. It didn't take someone with a Soul Perception as powerful as Stein's to be able to see that they had a strong resonance.

But with his talent for seeing not only the shape, but the _nature_ of souls, he could also see a number of surprising things in their resonance which sent his brain into overdrive.

Oh yes, he'd known for a long time that their resonance was the strongest of their year. It was, in fact, the strongest of any of the student pairs Stein had taught. He thought about the jokes he'd overheard among faculty during his years here, particularly when Soul and Maka had first begun successfully resonating. They'd had such trouble with it at first, but they quelled any doubts after that lesson all those years ago in the graveyard when Maka had (almost) pulled off a Witch Hunter and Soul had shown he was ready to lay his life down for his Meister. There had been chatter, and gossip, about how dramatic the change had been.

By the time Soul had become the Last Death Scythe, the speculation and gossipping about their resonance had all but stopped. The resonance no longer shocked anyone, was no longer noteworthy.

But Stein had always been inclined to dig deeper into things which interested him. To _dissect_, even.

Yes, there was something about their resonance that he found intriguing. What they were doing today was highly unusual, and their resonance was perfectly displayed, a feast for his bespectacled gaze. Their mission inside would also be a perfect time to begin observation and analysis.

He'd begin getting to the bottom of this. Right after this cigarette.

* * *

_Time is meaningless. _

_There is only one moment, stretched infinitely, undisturbed, unpunctuated. _

_Even if your brain could wrap around a concept such as time, such as change, you wouldn't know what to do with that information. _

_Your ability to process developments has never been your strong point. Easier to just give up. To sleep. Because then you don't have to deal with your endless parade of thoughts, of doubts, of speculations, of fears. _

_But the only way to be certain you exist at all is by the progression of your own thoughts. You are all alone in here after all._

_This is how you measure. This is the meaning you give to time. You are the center of your world, and there is nothing else but you, and you and you._

_You forgot your name long ago. In fact, when you are driven to introspection, you wonder, sometimes, if you ever had a name. _

_If you did, then time exists. _

_And that's a concept you refuse to deal with._

* * *

_Sometimes, you are fairly certain you are formless, like a thought in someone else's head._

_This possibility comforts you. If this is true, then you are not alone._

_You have a system now. You mark time by your own revelations._

_The first revelation comes as you try to imagine the kind of person who has imagined you. _

_Sometimes you fear it is someone endlessly cruel, impossibly sadistic. Someone who thinks of you merely as a tool, a cog in a machine. A failed experiment, a marionette with severed strings._

_Other times, you are certain it is someone warm. Someone fierce enough to break through any barrier, scale any wall, and tear time and space apart to pull you into their embrace._

_You would happily orbit that person. You would be happy in that person's mind, you're sure of it._

_Other times you are certain no one else exists at all._

* * *

_You mark the next passage of time, the next change, when you hear her voice. _

_It is bright, confident. Even when it is sad. Sometimes you think it is crying, and this makes you sad, and you wish you could reach out, respond, comfort this voice. _

_But you can't. You can't do anything but exist, tenuously, in what might be a figment of someone else's imagination._

_But there are times when the voice is steady, sure. _

_You don't understand what the voice is saying, but you are happy just to listen. The voice is all you have._

* * *

_The next phase begins when you hear her words, when you can understand what she is saying to you._

_You think it is the closest thing to joy you have ever felt._

_She tells you stories. _

_There are witches, and princesses, and dragons, and knights._

_You think you might have known what those things meant, once. You wonder if anyone else has ever read you a story before, and the thought is so inexplicably painful that you bury it and promise yourself to never try to think about any stories that she hasn't told you, ever again._

_You think maybe, if you can remember, if you can understand what her stories are about, you can understand this voice, this other person. This person who makes you not alone._

_You listen very hard._

* * *

_After this, you begin to pretend you are one of the characters in the story._

_It starts out small, at first. _

_The story about the girl with the long hair... You think you would like to see long hair, maybe. Even just to run your fingers through it, play with it for a while. _

_Maybe divide it evenly into pigtails, one on each side. _

_The one about the girl who sleeps. _

_Everyone sleeps. Everything stops._

_You think this is your favorite, because the prince fights through the thorns and climbs up to the castle and rescues the princess with a kiss. _

_It's pathetic, but you long to be awoken by a kiss. To have someone scale the walls of your tower and release you from this curse. _

_To kill the dragon._

_To break the witch's spell._

* * *

Soul woke to the feeling of something sharp poking into his side.

"Whaaa?" He jolted into consciousness, wondered where he was, how long he had been asleep, and where was –

"Hey Mister, you shouldn't be sleeping, you know."

Soul instinctively adjusted his position so that he was between Maka and this new person, even as he realized they weren't likely to be any sort of threat.

"C-Crona? Is that you?" He rubbed his eyes.

The person standing in front of him certainly looked like Crona, from the pink hair on their head down to the spats on their ankles. But this Crona couldn't have been more than four or five years old.

"That's what I'm called" the kid replied, dragging its stick through the sand mournfully.

"Hey, Maka, wake up." Soul turned around and shook her gently by the shoulder. "Crona's here."

Crona cocked their head to the side, but said nothing.

"Maka? This really isn't the time to be passing out, okay? We can rest when we get back–"

"She won't wake," Crona said.

"Maka? Come on, this isn't funny, okay?" Soul grasped her by the shoulders and shook her.

"She won't be coming back," Crona said.

"Maka! Listen to me! You need to wake the fuck up, right now!" Soul didn't know whether to check her pulse, plug her nose, or give her a slap. All he knew was that if she didn't wake up soon–

"The doors only open one way," Crona said.

"SHUT UP!" Soul spat. "Help me wake her up!"

"I already said she won't wake".

Soul ceased his shaking and pulled Maka's limp body closer. Then he turned around to glare accusingly at Crona.

"What have you done?"

* * *

**AN: Thanks to everyone who is following, reviewing, or favoriting this story! It means so much to me to know that people are reading and enjoying this!**


	10. Black Briar Rose

Warnings for: crude language, general peril, some gore / body horror

* * *

Maka blinked. Rubbed her eyes. She struggled to sit upright, groggily pushing herself onto her hands and knees. As her head began to clear, she experienced a vague, brief recollection of sitting somewhere, next to a rock, perhaps? And Soul... Soul had been there with her, hadn't he?

She clambered to her feet and looked around, brushing dust off her body and hands. There were no rocks, and there was no Soul. From her vantage point, all she could see was sand, stretching into an endless horizon, and a forest surrounding the base of a tower.

The tower...

Tall and imposing, it extended past a layer of low-lying mist before fading into inscrutability. She had no idea how much farther up it went because the haze of fog had grown thick enough to obscure even the clearest of views.

But the top of the tower was the least of her concerns at the moment. Across the dunes, she could see that those black thorny vines blocked her way into the tower, twisting and choking their way across the landscape, walling her out.

She didn't stop to wonder how these thorns could grow in the desert. She had a feeling that most of this world was an illusion, anyway… Or was it the other world that was an illusion?

Images sifted through her mind, like fragments of a dream. She stood still, trying to focus her thoughts and clear the fog that settled across her memory like the mist shrouding the forest before her. There was something in her thoughts, playing like haunting notes of some long-forgotten song. A vision swam to the surface, one in which she and a weapon named Soul hunted monsters and demons, and shared their lives together. A world in which she wielded him in battle, cooked him dinner at home, and sometimes wished to run her tongue along the soft line of his scar…

It was a bit like walking with pebbles in her shoes– the images in her mind were jarring. Something was wrong, but was it in this desert or in her head that the distortion lay? The longer Maka tried to compose her thoughts, decide whether it was this world or the other that was a dream, the more uncertain she became. She gazed thoughtfully at this seemingly impregnable thicket. She turned around briefly once more, just to be sure there was nothing waiting for her across the sandscape. The feeling of potential loss, of forgetting something important, nagged at her, tugged at the edges of her memory. She tried to place it, but the feeling slowly dissipated, like blood unfurling in a body of water.

Once, when she'd been a small child, her father had taken her to the Death City Observatory to look at the stars. She found that by staring too directly at bright stars, they would disappear into a blind spot and wink out of existence. Only when she let her gaze drift was she able to view the brightest stars, flaring back to life in the solace of her periphery.

The more she thought about that Weapon called Soul, about the place called Shibusen and the people with whom she shared what she thought was probably her home, the more they seemed to slip out of her grasp.

She felt a force, pulling her, drawing her, to the tower, even as her gut twinged in foreboding and her mind swirled with the fading remnants of reckless memories.

And yet… she gave into the pull, letting it thrum through her and draw her across the dunes. As she got closer, the tower seemed far more intimidating than it had from afar, but she felt her hesitation growing into resolve.

Maka Albarn looked back one last time, and finding nothing, reserved to continue onward without pause.

She needed to look away from the stars now to see the rest of the sky.

* * *

While Stein went for a smoke break, Mira Nygus sat at her desk. She checked the clock and tried to stifle a yawn. She'd risen at dawn to get in a morning run before leading the EAT class warm-ups because she'd always liked waking early. Mornings in Nevada were always the coolest, most bearable time of the day, and for a few hours before the city woke up, it felt like everything in the world was right.

A knock on her office door startled her and she was surprised to see her Meister standing in the hall. Since his death, Mira had trouble sensing Sid's wavelength unless she was purposely feeling for it. He really could sneak up on her any time he wanted, which left her vulnerable to surprise in a way usually reserved for overzealous NOT students who needed to be introduced to his theatrical underground-burrowing schtick.

Her nostalgic smirk faded at his grim expression. "What is it, Sid?"

He thrust a piece of paper into her outstretched hand. "New intelligence. Clay and Akane still aren't back from Prague, but we got word from Anya Hepburn this morning. Kid's asking you to take a look before the meeting, and we need everyone to be up to date and primed for action in case the witches decide to move."

Mira raised an eyebrow. The witches? She'd been expecting more negotiations with EuroDWMA, but if this was about the witches then there must be a development, one she didn't know about yet.

"When is the meeting?" She asked quietly.

"Midnight. I've already told him that you may have to join by mirror if the Crona situation isn't resolved by then."

She nodded gratefully and he left her to her work, reminding her that he never was one to mince words or waste time on pleasantries.

The walk to her desk felt longer than usual and she grasped the edge of the hardwood for balance as a wave of dizziness washed over her.

She needed to sit for a moment. She hesitated, decided not to take a sip of the strong herbal tea in her favorite mug, and focused instead on sifting through the papers in front of her. The file Sid had handed her contained several pieces of classified information concerning Shibusen's security measures, as well as correspondence with Europe regarding upcoming negotiations.

But the note pinned to the top was what caught her eye. She leaned over her desk to read Sid's scrawl, her usually-immaculate posture slumping from exhaustion and pain.

_'This morning at approximately 7am, a body was found by Palace gardeners near the edge of Gallandria's royal forest. Preliminary tests reveal magical blood, most likely of witchly origin. Her soul is intact, but there is a small marking on the inside of her right wrist. Cause of death as yet unknown. Upon receiving the news, Clay and Akane made arrangements to return to meet with H.R.H. Anastasia Yngling immediately to implement a plan for the safety of palace staff and occupants.'_

Mira rubbed her brow, deep in thought. EuroDWMA was located in London, and before the fuss over the treaty, it had typically worked directly under the American branch's orders. Since the trouble over secession, Shibusen main had kept in secret contact with various European affiliates.

One of the best secret contacts for Shibusen was Princess Anastasia Yngling, or as she preferred to be called, Anya Hepburn. Anya was head of state in the tiny but rich country of Gallandria, nestled at the forested edge of Germany. Her loyalty to the American branch of the DWMA, coupled with her political power and proximity to EuroDWMA, put her in a position which was ideal for gathering information and passing along tips to Lord Death.

The letter sat there like a lost piece to an unfinished puzzle and she had to remind herself that there was an entire team of people at Intelligence analyzing the situation. She trusted the new Lord Death. He was young, but he had already proven himself to be a capable leader. He would be able to work this out. She hoped.

She snapped her spine straight and forced her brow to smooth. She reached for her mug, and swallowed a sip of the bitter liquid inside with relish typically reserved for those drowning sorrows in hard liquor. Training the mind, the body, the soul, took practice, diligence, and sacrifice. She _couldn't_ afford to be at less than peak physical and mental condition. Her students depended on her. Lord Death depended on her. Her _partner_ depended on her. And her patients did too.

* * *

Maka was at the edge of the forest now. The air was tepid and damp, heavy with the promise of rain. The dark, bleak clouds gathering above the tower gave the landscape a strange, mirror-like effect. The growing shadows lent the forest of thorns an ethereal, lifelike quality. She felt a slight tugging, that nagging feeling of forgetting something, as though she once knew someone who would have been fascinated by this symmetry of sky and forest, but the thought slipped through her mind like dust in a mote of light, and was forgotten again.

She turned her head, and from the edges of her vision, she could sense the vines roiling, twisting and ebbing like tendrils of smoke. They stilled and shrank beneath her direct gaze, but it was hard to focus anywhere without becoming distracted by the movement in her peripheral vision.

She swallowed and felt her throat stick. Her mouth had gone dry at the prospect of fighting through all these thorns, but that was why she was here, wasn't it? The entire landscape seemed to be waiting for her to move. The very air seemed pregnant with anticipation, with unspoken longing.

Still, Maka felt as though she ought to have something with her; something to help her in this fight. She checked her body for any concealed weapons but found none; she was dressed in a leather blazer with a sash across the chest and elegantly ripped, form-fitting trousers. She imagined she looked like a punked-out version of some knight in shining armor, only her armor consisted purely of spiky knee pads, fingerless gloves, and shoulder guards.

If only she had a blade… Something to cut through these vines. If she couldn't find a way through, she'd be clawing for hours.

She hesitated, looking at the measly protection her gloves would afford, and resolved to try anyway.

The first thorns did not draw blood; their scratches she barely noticed in her eagerness to find gaps among the vines and squeeze herself past their confines. Then a vine snapped above her, coiling backwards and lashing against her face. She turned her head in time to save her eye, but the thorns dragged painfully along her cheek and she could feel the blood welling under the gash, threatening to spill angry drops into the desert sand below.

It trickled slowly down her face and she could feel it mixing with her sweat as she squirmed along a gap in the thorns, the fabric which covered her stomach catching painfully along the jagged edges. She heard a rumble of thunder, and she looked up to scan the darkening sky. The low-lying fog which had darkened the sky earlier now extended menacingly, bathing everything in green light.

A fat raindrop splatted against her forehead, and another fell into her open eye. She blinked furiously and quickened her pace. Burrowing into the thorns had yielded little progress, but without a blade she was unsure what else to try. Her hair caught on branches and the edges of her clothes began to catch and tear in earnest.

She was no longer sure if the moisture dripping down her neck was her own blood, sweat, or the rain, which had begun dotting the desert sand in quickly connecting dollops.

She thrust her way forward, and tried to ignore the shooting sensations, the prickles of her skin ripping as the thorny claws dug their way through the thin canvas of her pants and into the soft flesh of her thighs. Only her gloves were holding strong; the blood on her palms was from wiping her face, which was still bleeding freely.

A thick red drop resting at her jaw fell to make communion with rain-darkened sand, and Maka felt the forest shift slightly.

She couldn't say exactly what it was that first alerted her– the shadows in the corner of her eye lingering just a second too long, or the way the branches seemed to sway in the stagnant, windless air. But suddenly the forest was alive, made vibrant by the scent of her blood.

Something brushed against her ankle and she kicked behind her, only to lose her balance and topple forward. Before she could catch herself, her other foot was snagged by a thorny vine and she felt the vines and branches rope around her, constricting any avenues of escape and suspending her above the ground.

Yes, the vines were definitely alive, and as more of her blood fell onto the sand, thick roots began to swell out of the earth and fasten themselves around her legs and arms.

_These vines are trying to consume me_, Maka realized. _They're strengthened by my blood!_

In her panic, she reached out with her soul, desperate for contact with anyone or anything which could ground her, free her from these thorny constraints. Her mind swam with images and a name drifted to the forefront of her consciousness. "Crona!" She called desperately. "Crona?, Can you hear me? Can you help me?!"

Crona did not answer, but Maka felt like she was under scrutiny. She could feel eyes on her, making her skin crawl with unease. There was no way to tell who could be lurking in Crona's soul with her, but it stood to reason that she didn't really want to find out. Maka needed to get out of this forest, into that tower, _now_.

The more she struggled, the tighter her binds became. She felt thorns cutting into her skin, greedily drawing blood, gaining strength from her growing weakness. Her blood dripped openly onto the desert sand and disappeared as quickly, as though the roots were sucking every drop of moisture they could glean from her. _This is disgusting! They're trying to absorb me!_ She thought, even as she willed herself not to panic.

Rain slicked everything in sight, washing sweat into her wounds and making her grit her teeth in pain. The rain hitting the brush made a sound like a hiss, and she kept whipping her head around, certain there was someone there.

She tried to take cleansing breaths, to center herself and help think of a way out of this mess, but something about the entire forest dulled her senses, made her thoughts sluggish and weak. She felt as though she was missing something crucial, some part of herself, some link to a power greater than she could achieve on her own.

She felt so empty and afraid. _Who was I, before this? How did I get here?_

All she could see was the tower ahead, and the only certainty she had was that she was here for Crona. Who or what that was, was beyond her. "Crona," she panted. "I'm here! I came for you! Answer me! Cronaaaaaa!"

Someone said something, someone not very far through the fog.

It floated to her on a whisper, like a child's song, a sweet and soft voice brushing against her wounds with a balm, tender and pure. Maka sighed in relief as she sensed the approach of a soul. She wasn't alone out here.

But what was this person saying? She tried to turn her head, but a thick root held her neck in its grip and she settled for rolling her eyes in a desperate bid to see through the fog obscuring her visitor.

The voices were coming closer, but she couldn't make out the meaning behind their words

Blood dripped into her eye and she blinked desperately for a moment before rerouting her gaze, only to find dozens of eyes staring back at her.

_Uh oh_.

She extended her Soul Perception and gasped. _There were hundreds of them_.

These thorns were absolutely teeming with souls.

* * *

Back in the real world, or the soul world, or the dream world, depending on who was asked, were Soul and young Crona, and things were very tense.

"What have you done? What the fuck is going on?" Soul repeated, clutching Maka to his chest and swearing to himself that if Crona let any harm come to his Meister, he was going to make sure they_ wished_ they never woke up from this coma.

"Please don't yell at me, I don't like it when people raise their voices. It makes me nervous and then I want to run away," Crona said, covering their face with their hands and swaying on their feet.

Soul forced himself to breathe evenly, although his stomach felt like it had dropped to his knees and he was pretty sure this is what they called tunnel vision closing in on his visual perspective. "Please. Crona. Just. Help me get her back." He leaned forward, Maka's head cradled in his lap.

She looked so small and vulnerable. Her lips parted slightly and she sighed as he raised a trembling hand to wipe hair out of her face. She seemed as if she could still be sleeping, except that his Meister would never sleep at a time like this, not when he was so clearly distraught.

"Please," he repeated.

"I don't know how," Crona said quietly from between the fingers covering their face. "I'm sorry."

"Okay. Okay." _Breathe_. Something broke in his mind then, because all he could hear was "I don't know how" repeating endlessly in Crona's high, mournful voice. The words were familiar but they failed to register, just bouncing uselessly against some small barrier of hope which stupidly kept itself strong inside him.

"If you keep saying okay, will it really be alright?" Crona asked.

Soul didn't have the time nor the inclination to wonder if Crona was being facetious or whether they truly believed he could control fate by will alone.

He checked for Maka's pulse, and he could feel it, still strong beneath his fingers. He pressed his head to her chest. Her breathing was even and she looked peaceful. Maybe the answer was simple and Crona just didn't know it? They could figure something out, of course they would. He could be calm. Maka would be fine… _She would be fine_.

"Crona, can you just tell me what you do know? Because I'm freaking out over here."

_Understatement of the century_.

Crona nodded hesitantly.

"Where is she, Crona?"

"The... The shadow has her, I think".

"What is the shadow?"

Crona's face twisted in agony.

"I don't know. It's always been here."

"Where? Where is it now? What is it?"

Crona made a whining noise in the back of their throat and crouched down with their hands still shielding their face, as though they expected Soul to attack them.

Soul kicked himself mentally. In his panic, he'd gotten impatient, and scared the child. He needed to proceed with caution. He took Maka in his arms and pulled her gently over to the geometric structure they had been resting against earlier. Once she was safely propped up, he put his arms respectfully at his sides and approached Crona slowly.

"I'm sorry, Crona. Hey, I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? It's alright".

Crona didn't move from their defensive position.

Dammit, he was no good at dealing with Crona. That had always been Maka's thing. _If she were here right now, she'd know what to do_.

Soul hadn't felt so helpless since Maka had been struck with Arachne's curse and rendered immobile. This situation felt worse because she was unresponsive and unable to help him strategize. She was lying prone and certainly in no condition to wield him.

Was that really all he was useful for? Just some tool to be wielded by his much braver, smarter Meister?

He'd long ago made peace with the possibility that his life only had meaning in it if he was of use to Maka. Unhealthy as it was, he couldn't see a future for him that didn't include her by his side.

If that future was ever going to be a reality, though, he was going to have to learn to be strong on his own.

He needed to think like his Meister. Strategizing was familiar to Soul, but he always based his strategies around her. What could he do _by himself_?

_What would Maka do? Think_!

He remembered how Maka had been very friendly and took things slow when dealing with the swordsman. Crona seemed to respond well to that.

"Hey, Crona? You know what I just realized?"

Crona said nothing, but they peeked slowly through their fingers at Soul before flinching away upon making eye contact with him.

"I never told you my name, huh? That was pretty uncool of me."

Crona widened their eyes.

"I mean, I know your name and everything, but you probably don't know who I am."

The child whispered softly.

"What's that?" Soul asked.

"I said who are you," Crona said sheepishly.

"I'm Soul. Do you remember Maka?"

Crona pointed at Maka's body questioningly.

"Yep, that's her. I think you two met before, right?"

"She was…. Little then?"

So Maka had appeared to Crona as a child before…. Interesting.

"Uh yeah, I guess she was, but she's all grown up now".

Crona's face fell.

"B-but she's still your friend!" Soul explained in a rush.

Crona stared at Maka longingly. "I want to believe you. But I've been alone for so long…"

"She came all this way, Crona. She wanted to see you again. She cares about you so much."

"What about you?"

"I care about Maka," he said firmly. "I'm here to support her. This was not supposed to happen."

"Maka is your friend, too?"

"Maka is... my Meister. She's my partner and my friend too. And I really need her back. If there's anything you know, anything you can do to help, please tell me. "

Crona took a deep breath, then nodded. "Okay." Soul sighed in relief, even though he knew the danger wasn't over yet. _Finally, they were making some progress_.

Crona looked at Maka almost hungrily, then turned to Soul with resolve.

"I'll tell you everything I know."

* * *

**AN:** What will happen? Tell me what you think in the reviews / stay tuned to find out...

Sorry this took so long! A HUGE thank you to everyone who helped me by looking over this, especially Redphlox, who listened to me whine about it more than any person ever should.

And a massive thank you to every person who has read/commented/favorited/followed this! You all inspire every word I write :)

PS, If you look, you will notice that I have expanded the first chapter, and condensed what was formerly chapter 2 and 3 into one longer chapter. The rest of the chapters have been edited for grammar and stray typos but are unchanged. If you have been reading since the beginning, you may want to read the new chapter 1, but there is nothing in there that you'll be lost without. Sorry for any confusion, and I hope the edits are helpful to you!


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